


Missing Pages

by NebulousMistress



Series: The Shadow Over Atlantis [13]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: A series of oneshots, Episode: s01e03 Hide and Seek, Episode: s01e13 Hot Zone, Episode: s04e20 The Last Man, Episode: s05e08 The Queen, Gen, Miskatonic University, Post-Series, Pre-Series, Worldbuilding, did the research
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 11:51:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 25,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8488288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: A collection of stories too short or small for their own listing. Eternally unfinished.Now playing: The Third Oath





	1. Anthropology 101

Rodney McKay was in his sophomore year at Miskatonic University before he realized half the anthropology department was staring at him.

It all started in the fall semester with a general education class, Anthropology 101, taught by a Professor James Randall. That first day Professor Randall went down the list of 175 students, pronouncing all of their names with painstaking exactness before squinting around the room to try to match the name to a face. When he got to 'McKay, Meredith' his gaze lingered on several groups of women before an unmistakably male voice sighed, raised a hand, and admitted to being present. Randall looked, blinked, shrugged, accepted it with a 'hmm' and began to move on with 'Mitchell, John.' He got to “Mitch--” before something clicked in his mind and his head shot up to stare openly at Rodney.

“Is something wrong?” Rodney asked accusingly. “I prefer to go by 'Rodney', if you don't mind.”

“Nothing's wrong,” Randall said unconvincingly before moving on to 'Mitchell, John.'

After that first day Rodney began taking the time and effort to notice things more. The whispers behind his back, always commenting on his young age and his 'supposed' genius now began speculating about other things. His family, his visible distaste for the elder signs in the library, his physical characteristics, his hands, his eyes. He'd heard the words 'Marsh family eyes' before, from his mother before she stopped talking to him, from his father before he took the coward's way out. He knew what those words meant.

He knew he had his grandmother's eyes and he knew why.

It took a certain amount of recklessness to do what he did about it. With no small amount of nervousness he stayed after class one chilly day in November. He waited until 'legitimate' questions were answered, tried not to roll his eyes at the inanity of some of them. Once the idiots were gone Rodney stepped forward.

“Did you have a question, Meredith?” Randall asked.

Rodney scowled at the use of his real name but didn't bother correcting him; the old professors never used his preferred name no matter how much he asked or demanded. “I do, yes,” he said. “But it's not about the lecture. I'd rather we talk about this somewhere else.”

“The reading then? I hear you're a premed student, I suppose the type of reading is different from what you're used to.”

“It's not about the class, the subject, or the material,” Rodney said, getting annoyed. “I notice you stare at me a great deal. You have for a while now.”

Professor Randall was taken aback by the question and suddenly looked much less comfortable with the situation. He glanced around, though whether he was looking for backup or making sure they were alone even he didn't know. “You, ah, have a distinct family appearance,” he said nervously. “I noticed it right away. It's very...” He trailed off.

Rodney's annoyance grew dark. He felt the sudden idiotic urge to growl but tamped it down. “I know I have the 'Marsh family eyes' as they're called,” he said. “What I don't know is why you have to call attention to it by staring.”

“You know what it means?” Randall asked, shocked.

“Of course I do,” Rodney snapped. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared up at the professor. He blinked slowly, knowing it drew attention to his eyes. “That is why we **will** be taking this conversation somewhere else.”

“Yes, yes we will,” Randall agreed. He quickly gathered his lecture notes and student's assignments, stuffing them unceremoniously into his valise. He hurried from the lecture hall without a word, clearly expecting Rodney to follow.

With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, Rodney did. They left the lecture hall, crossing campus toward the Behavioural Sciences building. The usual stares followed him and he carried himself with an air of disdain. Let them stare, his movements seemed to say. Let them speculate. They'd only sound insane if they tried to say anything.

Professor Randall led Rodney to his office on the second floor. It was a comfortable office awash with the scent of old books and polished wood. Yet Rodney didn't want to enter, not with the twitching pain that struck him at the threshold. That pain didn't subside until Randall took a shell artifact off of a shelf and placed it in a desk drawer. It didn't look like the elder signs in the library, this one must be of the potent older style.

As the desk drawer closed Rodney found he could relax as the pain ebbed. He shook in its absence, his blood sugar beginning to crash. He needed to eat something.

There was a chair to one side of the office, a low table next to it stacked with half-graded papers. Rodney sat down in it even as Randall opened his mouth to offer. “Would you like some tea?” Randall asked instead.

“Do you have coffee?” Rodney asked. He needed something more than mere tea at the moment.

“I believe my grad students do,” Randall said. “I'll be back in a moment.” He left a little too quickly.

Rodney took a shaky breath as he looked around the room. Wood paneling, big old wooden desk, cracked wooden table, heavily laden shelves, it was exactly what he'd expected. Although...

Rodney got up to inspect some of the artifacts on the shelves. There were books, yes, lots of books but leaning on those books...

One artifact in particular was very familiar even though he rarely saw its form and never like this. This was a delicate construction of coral and pale gold, an alloy he'd only ever seen in the museum despite the whispers around him and the rantings of his late father. The figure clutched a gigantic pearl in its webbed claws, holding it out on the level of its fish-like head and neck ruff of bony spines. It leaned out from the coral, simultaneously offering the pearl and beckoning the viewer to come closer, to follow it back into the corals and seaweed and into the water...

Rodney shook his head of such thoughts as the door opened. He turned to see Professor Randall looking at him strangely, the grad student's coffee pot in hand. “Sorry,” Rodney said, sitting back in his chair and resolutely ignoring the figure on the shelf and its strange allure.

“It's all right,” Randall said automatically as he poured two mugs of coffee. He handed one to Rodney, who took it with a shaking hand before curling up with it and inhaling deeply. Randall took a chair, carefully arranging it so he kept the low table between them as a barrier.

Rodney held his mug close and took deep calming breaths. He didn't realize his hands were spread over the mug, the slight webbing between his fingers visible. He didn't realize he was arched over very much like the gold and coral monstrosity on the shelf. He didn't even realize he was still shaking as his blood sugar dropped low.

“You know what it means,” Randall said. It wasn't a question.

“Wha?” Rodney asked. He sat up, pupils blown wide. He shook his head and took a sip of coffee. Decent, but not exactly good. Grad student coffee.

“The 'Marsh family eyes,'” Randall clarified. “You know what it means.”

That brought the old anger back into Rodney's voice. “Of course I know what it means,” he snapped. “Lovecraft made sure of that when he wrote his histories of the area. That's what they are, aren't they? Not stories, histories. Maybe a few names changed here and there to protect the masses but they're still true! Arkham is still Arkham, Dunwich is still Dunwich, Innsmouth is... **was** still Innsmouth. People just believe it's horror fiction.”

“They were written as warnings,” Randall agreed. “It's a way of telling people the truth without inciting a mass panic.”

Rodney snorted.

“What would you have done?” Randall demanded. “The world was falling apart at the seams, Meredith. The Great War had just happened, human brutality on a scale never before seen. On top of that, forces beyond human control were crawling up out of the woodwork, monsters on every street corner, the stars were almost right back then. It was a very different time.”

“What, and things have changed in the past sixty years?” Rodney snapped. “There are still standing stones above Dunwich, fish are still thick off Innsmouth Harbor if you know their Song, Yog-Sothoth is still the gate, Great Cthulhu still dreams to those willing to listen, and humans are still being horrible to each other. What makes these times any different? At all?”

Randall picked up his coffee and took a sip to cover his lack of an answer. He didn't often drink coffee and this was reminding him why. He tried to come up with an answer that didn't sound like an accusation.

“The standing stones above Dunwich have been poisoned,” Rodney mused aloud, answering his own question. “Sixty years of study and curious tourists have altered their energies. The hybrids of Y'ha-nthlei have been scattered to the tides. No longer do they take to the water in peace and isolation, now they spread their taint far and wide while Dagon's chants rise from slums all over the world. Yog-Sothoth is still the gate. Great Cthulhu dreams for those willing to listen but finds them less able to hear. The stars have not changed, Professor. Humanity may have pushed back the darkness on one end but it creeps back on another. I wonder if it's always been like this, the stars always one conjunction away from going right, and we've only just come to realize it.”

“I... see what you mean,” Randall admitted.

Rodney took a shaking sigh. He couldn't ignore his blood sugar any longer. He put his mug of coffee down on some student's paper and reached into his backpack. He pulled out a sandwich, unwrapped it, and took a bite.

“So what are your plans?” Randall asked.

“Hmm?” Rodney asked. He swallowed his mouthful of tuna and bread. “What?”

“If the rumors around the admissions office are true, your father is dead. Everyone knows none of the Marsh family survived the raids and yet here you are with the telltale signs. You even have the first stages of the Innsmouth Look. What are you planning?”

Rodney took a deep draught of coffee. “I'm not sure yet,” he admitted. “I was thinking I might be a doctor but Microbio is giving me the creeps.”

Randall looked confused. “So... no plans to sink the continents beneath the waves to make the stars go right?”

“Why would I want to do that?” Rodney asked, equally confused. “Unless you're... Wait, you're not asking what I'll do after I take to the water? Great Mother, you **are** , aren't you? I haven't thought that far ahead. I have no idea what I'll be doing then. What's wrong with you?”

Professor Randall had relaxed into his chair, barely hiding a smile behind one hand as he looked like he'd been told the world wasn't ending.

Rodney rolled his eyes and focused on eating. He would deal with his professor being weird after he finished his sandwich. As he took the last bite and washed it down with the last of his mug of coffee he could have sworn he heard a high-pitched giggle. He glared at the weird human who was obviously pretending to be a professor. “Am I missing something?” he accused.

“The Marsh family patriarch isn't planning to conquer New England,” Randall said happily.

Rodney looked on, still confused and annoyed. The last time he'd checked his father held that title, or at least he claimed it when trying unsuccessfully to lead sermons in basements while rebuilding the Esoteric Order of Dagon. But his father was dead, the coward taking his own life because he couldn't... Oh... “I see,” he said, the confusion fading.

“So you see, yes, so you see,” Randall agreed. “You have to admit, I have a certain personal interest in making sure the Deep Ones don't sink this particular part of the continent.”

Rodney gave a slow smirk. “Well, you know these things take time,” he drawled. “And Chesapeake Bay is evidence that we're not exactly failing...”

Randall's giddy happiness fell flat as Rodney laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted on Wraithbait under a different name as part of 'Scenes from Miskatonic'. It has been added to.


	2. The Alpha Site

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Sandy Frank at the Alpha Site displays the same abnormality. Her CO has to be told.

An ocean crashed foamy waves against the rocky shore. Dull purple-red seaweeds clung to the rocks in the tides, pulled back and forth by the waves streaked red with plankton.

Red like blood.

It should have been odd and disturbing, this dark purple-blue sea streaked with all manner of reds. The twin stars should have made it worse, especially today with the eclipse, the dim red companion sun blocking out the light from the orange primary sun.

Dr. Sandra Frank sat on a boulder near the edge of the intertidal zone. Red weeds clung to the base of the rock, a testament to how high the tide would usually reach as the waves crested closer. Eclipse tides were always high, much higher than the weed line. She should probably head back to the Alpha Site base camp but...

She took a deep breath of salt and sea air, tasting the iron tang of red plankton on the spray. She loved the ocean, always had for as long as she could remember. It was calming, listening to the waves crash and smelling the complex stench of the intertidal zone. There was a song to the ocean, a quiet music that no one else bothered to listen for.

That was what made this ocean strange. Not the red iron-based plankton, not the orange and red suns, not the purple-blue water. It was the song. She couldn't hear it here. But that didn't stop her from coming out to these rocks, perching on the highest one she could find, and listening to the waves.

She heard the crunch of boots on rocky sand and sighed. She never had enough time out here and she was never alone. It was SGC policy to make sure their scientists were never left alone. Too many lessons learned at the expense of Dr. Jackson's health and pride. She looked over, noting Airman Robertson with a nod, before shifting in her perch.

“Message from the SGC,” Robertson said. “Big one.”

“We moving Alpha Sites again?” she asked. The 'Alpha Site' was a name, nothing more. In reality it meant a different planet after every major incident. During the ordeal with the Ori the SGC had five separate Alpha Sites in operation, not including the caravan groups that spent the entire war gate-jumping like nomads. Moving Alpha Sites meant something had gone wrong somewhere.

“No, nothing like that,” Robertson assured. “It was a really weird message. It came with a box of books, some movies, and of all things a file that Tech assures me is a radio show. Also a big-ass official file to the Major. He wants to talk to you, by the way.”

Dr. Frank rolled her eyes. “Ugh, and I bet they're connected,” she groaned. “Wait, a radio show?”

Robertson grinned. “Tech has a whole thing planned out for tonight,” he said. “He says it's gonna be great. Last I heard he was trying to get the Commissary involved.”

“Tech has a name, you know,” Dr. Frank said as she stretched out on her perch. The waves crashed below them, splashing up onto Robertson's boots. The eclipse tide was coming in and it was going to be a doozy, a full 12 feet above normal high tide.

“I know,” Robertson said. “But he answers to Tech so...”

She rolled her eyes before dropping down onto wet sand and slippery rocks. She wiped the flakes of dead plant and stone from her hands. “Lead on, then,” she said.

The Alpha Site camp was a half hour inland up the sea cliffs to the plateau. The sounds of the sea echoed faintly as they hiked the trail leading up the cliffs, fading as they reached the perimeter line of red camo netting and salt shrubs. From there the camp was a few clicks inland, a vast wide space kept clear by Corps engineers and the native climate.

The Major's tent was strangely inviting and distanced at the same time. Major Nalci was a fair commander, always open to better ideas if they were to be had, but he did keep the floor of his tent covered with Persian rugs like a fantasy king. It was a family thing, he said, and no one questioned it lest they be tasked with carrying the rugs next time they had to change Alpha Sites. Dr. Frank pulled away the tent flap and looked inside. “You wanted to see me, sir?” she asked.

Major Barris Nalci waved amicably and gestured for her to come in. Laid out on the card table he used as a desk were the contents of a thick file, presumably today's 'official file' from the SGC. It certainly had the markings for an official classified file. It even had a green triangle, the infamous 'delta green' marking she'd only heard of. “Sit down, Sandra,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from him. “Would you like some tea?” He poured her a cup without waiting for her answer.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the chair and the teacup. She held cup and saucer formally before taking a sip.

“I had an... interesting file come in today,” Major Nalci said. He looked intently at her, as though studying her. “It's about you.”

Dr. Frank felt cold confusion course through her veins. “Me, sir?”

“Yes.”

“What does it say?” she asked.

Major Nalci kept looking at her, fixing her with an appraising stare. He looked like he was searching for some sort of sign or deeper meaning in her blue-green eyes. “You're 33 years old,” he mused. “Your specialty is biology, is it not?”

“Yes, I study the different types of photoautotrophic chemicals in this galaxy,” she said slowly. Was there something wrong with her credentials? There shouldn't be, she certainly worked hard enough on her thesis. Had one of her theories been proven right by someone outside the SGC? Was she going to be allowed to publish something?

“What do you know of human genetics?” Major Nalci asked.

“I don't have the ATA gene,” she said automatically. “I was tested when I came into the SGC.”

The Major smiled. “This isn't about the ATA gene,” he said. “But I'm serious. What do you know of human genetics?”

Dr. Frank shrugged. “Enough to get by,” she admitted. “I could get through an undergrad course but that's about it. What is this about?”

“So you don't know why the SGC sent us a shipment of cosmic horror paraphernalia marked 'urgent'. You don't know why Technician Jeffers is planning a large production out of a radio show of _The Shadow Over Innsmouth_.”

“Wait, what?” Dr. Frank put her teacup and saucer down on the card table and stood up to pace. “This has to be a joke,” she said. “Some kind of sick, twisted joke.”

“You have heard of the case of Dr. McKay,” Major Nalci said.

“Why, what's wrong with Dr. McKay?” she asked.

The Major sat back, contemplating. “Dr. Frank, you may want to sit down. I expect this news to come as quite a shock.”

It was a shock. It was more than a shock, it had to be some sort of joke. She sat there as Major Nalci read her into the delta green file, that feeling of cold confusion turning to icy disbelief. The stories the creepy gothic kids read in high school were true. There **were** cosmic horrors who wore mantles of godhood on Earth, same as every other world out here. Although if she thought about it, the existence of Great Cthulhu wasn't too strange. Was he any different from the Ori? Or the Goa'uld?

But that wasn't what unnerved her.

*****

The tent was full of marines and airmen, all munching popcorn and only occasionally throwing kernels at each other. The screen showed a series of still images, cycling through ocean scenes and lonely shore towns, through the sea at night with the moon hanging bloody and ominous, into eerie images of lamp-like eyes glowing green in waving sedgegrass. The radio show was not any less obvious. Aside from the laughable attempts at New England accents the main character's sanity grew more and more fragile as he was trapped by his own curiosity, explored the aged seaport, wandered the open shore, and made the fateful decision to sit down with the madman Zadok Allen.

Now the main character ran through town, pursued by monsters and creatures. The images changed, becoming less artistic and more real as they began to show a creature photographed first in the dark, then in the light. It was so real it could have lunged out of the screen even as the sounds of story and audience fell away.

It had the head of a fish with wide blue eyes on the sides of its head. Its maw was littered with sharp teeth that seemed familiarly human-like. It was a silver-green though it had a white belly, long black claws on its paws, and a long lashing tail behind it amidst a ridge of dorsal fin and bony spines. She could almost hear it shrieking.

It **was** shrieking.

Wait, how?

The lights went up and everyone was staring at her. She looked at them, wondering why they stared with such horror. Why did they stare at her with realization in their eyes? What did they see? How could they...

Wait...

That sound... She'd made that sound, hadn't she?

Oh god... Oh hell... Oh Mother Hydra...

Suddenly it all made sense.

She drew herself up to her full height, all 5 foot 4 of it. She stood in shadow that she didn't even notice as her own eyes held that same green reflection.

It all made sense now. Why she had never been allowed to see her grandmother. Why her cousin Vincent went mad and threw himself into the ocean. Why her own mother obsessed over every lost hair and neck wrinkle.

It was all true.

“It's all true,” she said and she didn't even recognize her own voice for a moment. Hoarse, scratchy, her throat was on fire.

In the background the radio show continued, the main character glorying in his fate. She glanced over at Tech and he quickly cut the audio.

She turned and left the tent, throwing herself into the moonless night, into a darkness as bright as day.

*****

They found her early the next morning at the base of the sea cliffs. She sat perched on the boulder, staring out into the purple-blue ocean and the rising of the eclipsed suns. Her uniform was gone, half the pieces missing while others were thrown around the rocks. She was soaking wet, water dripping between grey scaly patches on her spine, her hair streaked with red and plastered to her head.

“Dr. Frank?” Airman Robertson called. “Sandra? Sandy? You okay there?”

She shook her head.

“Look, I'll admit everyone's a little weirded out but it's not that bad,” Robertson said. “The Major gave a whole spiel last night and made sure we knew a few things. We're not allowed to treat you any different, nobody's gonna hurt you, compared to what we see out here this is normal.”

She didn't answer him, still staring out to sea.

“I think it's kind of neat,” Robertson continued. “Especially out here. We find stargates near water half the time, imagine what we could find there. And it's not like it's an immediate change. I mean, the Major said the McKay case involved alien technology and you're usually safe from that, you study plants.”

She closed her eyes and gave a shaky sigh.

“Sandy, what's wrong?”

Dr. Frank finally turned from the ocean. “It's all wrong,” she whispered. “There's no one out there. There's no one Singing. There's supposed to be Singing.”

“Oookay...”

She shivered.

“Look, you're cold and wet and, um, I can't find all your clothes, we should get you back to base. There's bacon in the Commissary.”

Dr. Frank nodded and climbed down from her perch. She took what clothes he offered, a jacket, a pair of panties, and a boot, and made a half-hearted attempt to get dressed. She needed to face them. They needed to be okay.

The Alpha Site team was all she had. They were her team, her comrades, her friends.

Her Nest.

She ignored the single boot and started up the cliff path to the plateau in bare feet, shivering.

 


	3. Tekelili

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during/after s01e03 Hide and Seek

_tekelili... tekelili..._

The words echoed in Rodney McKay's head as the creature made of shadow and energy chased the flickering naquadah generators around the tower. The creature flowed like water along the floors of Atlantis, sweeping them clean of debris and detritus. At least now they wouldn't have to deal with the ten thousand year old dead plants.

It swept away the living, too. Ford's injuries were described as similar to a lightning strike, a powerful electrical discharge that left him covered with faint Lichtenberg scars all along his limbs. But what Carson didn't focus on, what Weir didn't know, what the others didn't consider important, were the crush injuries. Ford's description included the weight of the creature, a crushing weight that emptied his lungs, that pressed him into the floor, that felt like being steamrolled. Crush bruising was already beginning to form as the Lichtenberg scars faded from red to white.

Then there were his clothes. No one considered it important that Ford's uniform seemed to dissolve off of him or that his skin was pink and smooth from acid exposure and digestive enzymes. All that mattered was that this thing was dangerous and Ford was going to be okay.

Nobody else seemed to recognize what they were dealing with.

Which left Rodney terrified at the prospect. Why did the Ancients have a shoggoth?

*****

Rodney tried to warn them. This thing was smart but it was a smart so far outside their understanding it would be like trying to reason with a shark. A hungry shark who hadn't eaten in thousands of years and suddenly found itself surrounded by fun morsels it could dissolve, pull apart, gnaw on with ever forming and dissolving teeth, watch with a thousand eyes that existed and didn't. The shoggoth would incorporate their substance into its form and gain ever more solidity, becoming the mass of black protoplasm the books all described. It would toy with them all for its own mad amusement.

And now the others wanted him to operate the containment vessel? No.

No. Nope. Not I. Nay. Not a chance.

The personal shield fell off.

Definitely not. Rodney grinned triumphantly at the power bar in his hand before devouring it.

But this containment device... This was a shoggoth. His father had told him of shoggoths once, he spoke of them as allies in the war against the Old Ones. They sought beings who would allow them their sentience, not attempt to enslave them, gave them fun things to play with. The Deep Ones did these things and more, treating the shoggoths as allies and friends rather than slaves. Thus were the Deep Ones more compassionate than the Old Ones, the Great Race, or even humanity itself. Rodney had wondered at the time, ended up dismissing it. After all, he was never going to run into a shoggoth in real life.

Oh how wrong he'd been.

And this containment device...

If his father was correct then the device wasn't going to work. The shoggoth wouldn't fall for it.

And it didn't.

*****

The power was off, the sensors were down, even the lights were off. The shoggoth was somewhere but more importantly it wasn't right here.

“We need to know where it is right now,” Weir said.

No, Rodney thought. He knew what they were going to do.

“We'll have to turn the power on to use the sensors,” Grodin said.

“You can't do that,” Rodney said.

“Do it,” Weir said. “Just the Operations Tower.”

The lights came back on and Rodney winced. Now the shoggoth was going to come right here. And there it was and still no one took him seriously.

“Do you think it wants to be here?” Teyla asked.

The room went quiet save for the approaching tones of _tekelili_ that no one else seemed to hear.

“What do you mean?” Sheppard asked.

“It's been trapped here for thousands of years alone,” Teyla said.

“It's not alone anymore,” Weir said.

Rodney scowled at the naïve compassion in her voice. “It doesn't think on that level,” he snapped. “It thinks about eating.” And hunting. And toying. And vengeance. “That's it.”

“Well you would know,” Sheppard snapped back, intending it as some sort of insult. It wasn't anger those words inspired.

“If we stay it will kill us,” Teyla said.

“Not if we kill it first,” Sheppard insisted.

“I don't see how,” Rodney said with a snort.

“Then either we must go or it must,” Teyla said. She turned to the gate. “Maybe it wants to go. If we open the stargate...”

*****

This was a bad idea and they still weren't listening to him.

Rodney contemplated saying something. He seriously considered telling them what he knew. This was a shoggoth, it was immune to such trifles as bullets, it toyed with its victims before killing them, it's been driven insane by the isolation and it will eat us all alive while it relearns what it is. But then he'd have to explain how he knew. This wasn't in the database, the Ancients never cared enough about their test subject to detail its feelings on the matter. They didn't care about its well-being, they were only interested in its fluid-energy dichotomy.

He'd have to explain how he knew and then... what else would he have to explain?

As the shoggoth flowed around the MALP, ate its battery, glutted itself on the naquadah generator, Rodney had an idea.

It was a terrible idea.

These personal shields were limited in scope, power, and usage. They were never meant to be taxed this much.

But if he died he would never have to tell them. And if it worked...

Rodney put the shield on his chest, activated it, and walked into the bulk of the shoggoth. He faintly heard the screams behind him, frantic calls of his name, terrified begging for him to stop and then...

The faint calls of _tekelili_ were deafening in here. A hundred eyes turned on him, all watching him as he stepped through the mass of the shoggoth like it wasn't solid, like it wasn't trying to grab him with its bulk, as though pseudopods weren't slipping and sliding off the energy shield.

Rodney reached the MALP and the generator in its carrying case. He picked up the case and then...

Sudden pressure collapsed in on him as the shield failed. He screamed thick bubbles into the gelatinous mass of the shoggoth as it grabbed him, as its digestive juices seeped all over him, as its voice pressed in on him.

The cries of _tekelili_ had been loud before. But now without the shield...

The last coherent thing Rodney thought was how it was interesting that the Ancient defense shield provided a measure of protection from mental intrusion. And then the thoughts were not his own.

_tekelili..._

_tekelili..._

_obey..._

_little masters..._

_tasty..._

Rodney pulled his mind together just enough to think one pleading thought. 'don't eat me...'

_tasty..._

_tastes like..._

_friend?_

Images assaulted Rodney's mind, of coral towers and a deep blue sea, of ichthian monsters who didn't mock, didn't tease, didn't command, didn't shy away in fear. A million years and more of toys, of food, of sharks and Deep Ones and human sacrifices. And then capture by not-quite-humans, torn away from all it knew and then...

_tastes like friend... little friend..._

'yes... I'll be your friend... just don't eat me...'

_tasty..._

Rodney vaguely felt the box leave his hands. He also vaguely felt the box inside him, the ring of the stargate, the contour of the stairs, and nothing under his feet.

_friend... little friend..._

'there's a place... beyond the gate... you'll be safe...'

_safe... with friend..._

'no... please... I have to stay here...'

Something shifted around him and Rodney suddenly couldn't feel the box anymore. He couldn't feel the ground or the stargate or the steps or anything other than an eerily warm fluid that grew warmer and warmer against his skin. It started burning. He tried to squirm, to get away, but it was everywhere and he couldn't move, couldn't breathe.

_safe... will see friend again..._

Rodney fell backward, fell forever as he drifted ever so slowly down. It didn't even feel like a direction, it felt like burning, crushing, like suffocating...

Then the feeling was gone and he was alone in his head.

And then he was gone.

*****

Sheppard got there first. He slipped on the strange fluid that completely coated Rodney and the floor, going down hard. He ignored the pain as he reached for one slime-covered wrist. Rodney had a pulse but the slime... Sheppard's eyes went cold as he felt it burning his hands. “Medical team to the gateroom,” he said into his radio, voice deadly calm.

“McKay?” Weir asked. She brushed the Ancient shield but it slid right off.

“The power must have been drained by the entity,” Grodin said.

Rodney moved, shifted, then slowly turned over and spat out a great gob of slime. He gasped for air but far too slowly, as though he were moving through time at a different speed than the others. “Kn'a c'yar?” he asked.

“You okay, Rodney?” Sheppard asked.

Rodney blinked up at Sheppard, each movement slow and ethereal. “Ehye'bthnk...” he whispered. “Ch'h'ah... wha... what... happened?”

“You did it,” Weir said.

“Lw'nafh... did... I did?”

“It went through the gate,” Weir said, growing worried at Rodney's condition. He was saying words that made no sense, was covered in a rapidly evaporating slime, was moving in slow motion. What was that entity? What had it done to him?

“You must have passed out,” Sheppard said.

Rodney smiled at him. “Thanks for... not... saying that... other... thing...”

The medical team came in and Weir stepped back, gesturing for them to check on Rodney. His skin was an uncomfortable red color and his clothes seemed to have lost some of their cohesion. At least he didn't seem to be in any pain.

But she had no idea how. The slime still on her fingers burned.

*****

Rodney sat on the infirmary bed, staring silently down at his hands. He traced the ragged scars along his fingers, remembering the pain and desperation he felt with the knife in his hands.

Three days. He made it three days into the expedition before something like this came up. Before his tainted blood reared its ugly head and he did something he couldn't explain.

Three fucking days.

Now there would be questions and interrogations and he'd break, he'd tell them everything and not even Carson could help him.

Carson. Well, at least he'd had the opportunity to tell someone on his own terms, even if it was the doctor who'd come to him demanding to know why his neck x-rays were weird and what the scars on his hands were.

And here they came now, Major Sheppard and Dr. Weir. Rodney twisted his hands in the infirmary sheet, trying in vain to hide all the evidence he could. But it was no use, they obviously--

“Rodney, that was amazing,” Dr. Weir said.

Rodney looked up at her, confused.

“How did you know the shield would hold out long enough?” she asked.

Rodney shrugged. “I didn't,” he admitted. “I just hoped and then...” He couldn't say it.

“Well I'm glad it held out because you saved us all,” Weir said.

Rodney waited for the accusation, wondering where it was. Instead she... wait... she thought the shield held out the whole time? But the power loss and the digestive slime in his lungs and his semi-conscious state and the words... Was she... Did she not even notice?

He blinked slowly at her, blue eyes wide. She didn't realize. She didn't know. She didn't even notice what sat in front of her face...

“You're still moving a little slowly, you okay?” Sheppard asked.

Rodney shrugged. “I'm still a little... it's nothing... I'll be fine...”

Sheppard clapped him on the shoulder and they left him in the infirmary.

They didn't know.

Rodney flopped onto the infirmary bed with a noise of glee and rolled over onto his belly, grabbing his pillow to tuck it under his chin and cuddle. They didn't know! He was safe.

 


	4. Propriety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during s05e08 The Queen
> 
> The Wraith have their own rituals concerning monere.

The plan was interesting.

There were merits to this plan, radical though it was. There were risks, there were always risks, but Guide did not grow so old by lurking in the shadows and allowing the worlds to turn in his absence. Greatness was not given, it was taken, and this opportunity was ripe for the taking.

A method of changing the Wraith. Not a cure for they were not ill. Not a fix for they were not broken. It was an alteration, nothing more. A change. The idea was worth pursuing, even if it were only used to weaken an opponent, subjugate a rival, or defend against a Lantean genetic weapon.

A gene therapy. Guide had no illusions, this was probably a bad idea, but even bad ideas had their merit.

But how to convince the Primary... Guide's hiss rumbled in his chest as he contemplated the little sister, the Wraith-blooded Teyla who had grown so much these few short years. He liked to think his influence had aided in her power though more likely it was simply practice. Practice, talent, opportunity, and the Song of the delightful creature beside her.

Guide's rumble turned to amusement. He remembered the panicked human that once would have stood at her side. That human was gone, never to return, replaced by the creature with the blank face, shining scales, and the civilized Song.

Guide had no queen, not for several culls. An idea of this magnitude required a Queen to speak to the Primary. But it would be rude to assume...

“We should do this properly,” Guide said.

“I'm listening,” Sheppard said warily.

“Among all the queens in the alliance, one who sits above the rest,” Guide explained. “We call her the Primary.”

_The uber-queen?_ McKay asked.

Guide couldn't help the smirk as he heard McKay's voice as clearly as he heard his second's gasp of surprise. Guide turned a glance in Bonewhite's direction. _I told you he speaks_ , Guide thought. _He is an uncommon Diaspora._

_He has claimed no fata... he doesn't need one?_ Bonewhite's wide eyes betrayed his awe.

Guide shook his head with a throat-rumble before turning his attention back to the Diaspora and his humans. “Convince her and the rest will fall in line.”

“Then convince her,” Sheppard said.

Guide rolled his eyes. “She will only speak to another queen,” he said. “She is a proper queen and will accept nothing else.”

“And your queen was killed last year in the skies above Atlantis,” Teyla realized.

“Regrettably, yes,” Guide admitted. “But the Primary does not know this.”

“You bluffed your way into the alliance and convinced them you still have a queen?!” Sheppard demanded. Guide wasn't sure if he was impressed or disturbed. Sheppard's scent meant the words could go either way.

“They would not have accepted me otherwise,” Guide said. “Up 'til now I've been able to maintain this subterfuge but a face-to-face meeting... That would be difficult. In fact, there is only one person who could help me.” He turned to look at Teyla. “But I would not presume. After all, we must do this properly.”

“What do you mean 'properly'?” Sheppard asked.

Finally the human decided to ask. Ronon smelled like wary anger, nothing new there. Sheppard was suspicious, the stench pouring from him in waves. Teyla radiated apprehension underneath her facade of calm. The young doctor Keller smelled like a child. Only McKay was an enigma and that was because he smelled like the living ocean.

No matter. Guide would learn the scents behind this Diaspora. It was only proper. He turned toward McKay. “We have many names for the creatures known through the galaxy as 'monere'. We call them Forsaken, Forbidden. The Diaspora. To feed on a Diaspora is one of our oldest taboos. I would starve before feeding on one. But in bringing Dr. McKay here...”

Ronon pulled away from his lean against the wall.

“You put me in a delicate position,” Guide continued. “You see, we have always understood humans to be subordinates of their Diaspora. And so to do this properly, I need his permission.”

“Well that's easy,” Sheppard said. He poked McKay.

_Wait, why me?_ McKay asked. _Why do you need me to decide? It's up to her, if she wants to do it then why should I have any say?_

“The ban on feeding is not the only taboo concerning the Diaspora, Dr. McKay,” Guide said, purring. “I could be accused of leaving you to languish without a voice, a fate I hear that can be worse than death. Although you seem to be quite capable of speaking in a civilized manner without their help.”

Sheppard was staring, mouth agape as he looked between Guide and McKay. He seemed to be personally affronted by, what? Ah. Guide laughed. “Dr. McKay began sharing his thoughts with me long before his transformation.”

_What? When?_ McKay's thoughts sounded affronted as he searched his memory. _I haven't been human since... And then the last time we were... But... Oh..._ Guide could see McKay's realization in the widening of his pupils, in the droop of his spinal fin, in the drag of his tail. _The nanites. I remember. You gave up speaking aloud because it wasn't fast enough, wasn't concise enough, and I didn't have to either and then we... That's how we succeeded... It was so much easier without words..._

Guide could smell Sheppard's betrayal. It was amusing but also delightfully interesting.

“I must ask your permission,” Guide said, bringing McKay back to the present. “There are procedures for this.”

“Like what?” Ronon asked.

Guide smiled at the former runner. “I have to win her in battle.”

“Fair enough,” Ronon said before charging his weapon and raising it. “Fight me.”

“Ronon, put that down,” Teyla snapped. “If anyone will be defending me it will be me. I am my own champion.”

“I have no doubt,” Guide agreed. “But as far as propriety goes this is not your concern. It is your decision, I grant you that. But should you decide in favor I must still earn your collaboration. Decide.”

Guide turned and walked out. The doors sealed behind him even as he laid a hand on the hive wall to listen.

*****

_I can't fight Todd, he's a Wraith!_

“And you're a Deep One,” Sheppard said.

_Yeah, so?!_

“Rodney...” Sheppard reached down to grab one of Rodney's paws. He tried to yank it off of the floor but Rodney wasn't budging. Sheppard glared until Rodney huffed, murred, and sat back with his paws off the floor. “Look, you have giant claws.”

_They're not that big..._

“And you have teeth as pointed as the Wraith's.” Teyla agreed. “Many more of them as well.”

“I can shoot you in the face again,” Ronon offered. “Seemed to work last time.”

Rodney squealed then hissed. _Fine, fine, I'm a big bad monster. How does that help against a Wraith?_

“He cannot feed on you, Rodney,” Teyla said. “He is bound by an ancient taboo.”

Rodney murred, his tail lashing as he tried to think of a way out of this. _But if you didn't want to do this..._

“This is not a decision I take lightly,” Teyla said. “I realize the risks. But this may be our only chance to test the gene therapy.”

“But you don't have to...” Keller said.

“You said so yourself, Jennifer,” Teyla said. “The simulations have told you everything they can. Now you need living trials. I am willing to give you that chance.”

“Or we could just kill them all,” Ronon offered.

Rodney murred, tail lashing before he curled it around himself. _I'll do it. If Teyla's willing to do this then... so am I._

“I am glad,” Teyla said.

Sheppard and Ronon looked at each other, both resigning themselves to something horrible as the door opened.

*****

Guide stood in the open door. “Come with me, then,” he said, holding out his non-feeding hand in invitation. “We must do this properly.”

McKay hopped forward as Guide hoped he would. _What does 'properly' entail?_

Guide chuckled as he led them from the negotiation chamber which was once the Queen's Foyer. Beyond there would have been the Queen's Chambers, the Queen's Favored, and finally the Queen's Throne. The room went unused now as there was no queen to hold court and it was sacrilege for a male to take her throne. Still, that was where he led them, to the Queen's Throne.

The room was not empty. Guide's own court heard his call and came to watch this ancient rite, the ritual battle between a Queen's Champion and a Diaspora's Chosen.

McKay did not have to know he was allowed to choose a champion. It was easier this way. It was much more interesting this way.

_What happens now?_

Guide turned his thoughts to the Diaspora's question. He stepped behind McKay and placed both hands on his neck.

“Ronon, stop,” Teyla snapped. Guide vaguely heard the whine of the runner's pistol. It was unimportant.

This was important.

Guide whispered his thoughts to the Deep One, watching with interest as McKay's eyes went wide, their pupils blown, before falling closed with a strange serenity. Whether it was the mental contact or something else Guide could not say. But he was intrigued as he leaned down and swiped his tongue along the scales of McKay's snout.

McKay pulled away and purred his assent. The ritual could begin.

*****

The throne room was ringed with people. Behind the throne stood Guide's court, Bonewhite standing at the right hand of the empty throne. Wraith of different castes, lines, blades and clevermen alike all watched with interest as Guide stripped off his hiveskin coat and handed it to Bonewhite. Before the throne stood the Lanteans, Sheppard and Ronon looking apprehensive and angry as their friend was 'forced' to do battle to some unknown end. Teyla kept them under control with veiled threats and the force of her will, as any good Wraith queen might keep her blades in line. Only the young doctor tried to pretend she wasn't here, that this wasn't happening.

Before the empty throne there was a large space, perhaps designed for this purpose. Guide was unsure, it had been centuries since the Wraith could converse in such a civilized manner with any of the Disapora. Regardless, he stood watching the Diaspora McKay as the creature paced on all four paws like an animal, claws scraping haphazardly at the hive floor. He left small rents in the hiveflesh under his paws as he barked and snarled, teeth bared and tail lashing. Whatever Diaspora these Deep Ones were, they were formidable.

Guide stepped into the middle of the space as McKay began to circle him, hissing. Guide hissed back, dropping to all fours to match the creature's movements as they circled the floor before the empty throne.

And then it began.

McKay lunged, claws splayed as he raked Guide across the shoulders and face. Then he darted back and the circling began again, Guide grinning maniacally. He could taste his own blood on his lips as he lunged next, the claws of his non-feeding hand scraping against thick scales.

They darted back, the circle closing in as they snarled, lunged, struck, and postured. McKay rattled his gill plates, his spines raised. Guide had no such adornments, instead hissing and snarling and growling like a Diaspora himself.

There was blood on his face, blood on the floor, blood on his claws. McKay left bloody pawprints on the floor even as he lunged in again. Guide felt the creature's jaws close over his shoulder and he roared, raking his own claws up the soft white skin of McKay's belly. McKay shrieked then jumped back, still snarling and snapping even as he bled from the rents in his chest and belly.

And then it ended.

Both parties leapt forward, meeting in the middle before the empty throne. Guide's claws scrabbled for purchase against the scales of McKay's face even while McKay grasped and grabbed and rent.

They landed in a heap.

_Ow._

The seriousness broke as Guide couldn't help laughing at McKay's simple complaint.

_Ow, seriously, I'm bleeding! You know I don't heal like you do, right? This is gonna sting when I swim, you realize that. I'm a salt-water monster here, salt water burns against open wounds!_

Guide kept laughing even as he pulled McKay close to him and licked him along the scales of his head.

_Wait, what are you... Oh... **Oh...**_ And there it was, McKay began purring even as he leaned back and nuzzled Guide.

Guide could hear the approval from his court, the mental cheers that rose up throughout the hive. There would be talk of this, although most of his court had no idea what had been agreed upon here. It would have to stay that way. It was unfortunate but that was the price of subterfuge. For now he would scent the Diaspora as his own even as McKay tried to rub his fishy smell all over him.

And then Guide heard the whine of the runner's pistol.

_Ronon, put it away. I mean it. He's not hurting me._

Guide purred as McKay attempted to defend him.

“He's licking you,” Ronon said.

McKay's response was apparently to lay bodily on Guide and wiggle while purring. Guide did not mind. Diaspora were expected to be strange, after all.

“Ronon, stand down,” Teyla said.

Ronon growled, a sound to rival any Diaspora, and stormed out of the throne room. Guide chuckled as he heard Sheppard follow and their agreement to forget this ever happened. It wouldn't even be mentioned in their reports.

It was just as well. Guide was sure the humans had their own rituals concerning the Diaspora and he did not feel the need to be a part of those. The humans could ignore him now as he laid his head on McKay's neck and purred, the monster's tail wrapped around him.

 


	5. Esoteric Order

They named him Meredith.

It's a noble name, his father said, befitting of our heritage. We are the great lords of the sea and when the time is right we will take to the water and assume our power. The surface world trembles at the sea's power, melts at the water's bidding, and dies at the salt's incursion. Be proud of your name, Meredith.

But his father didn't have to dodge bullies at school or be mocked by teachers for his inattention. School was just so **boring** and he had a hard time staying awake. Why should he have to when he'd mastered fractions at the age of four? When he was reading Plato's _Critias_ while the other kids had problems with the Grimm tales? Why should he have to reduce himself to their level? To be their friends? They didn't want to be his friends so why should he bother?

It was after another parent-teacher conference when Meredith's father pulled him aside and sat him down.

“What's wrong, Meredith?” his father asked.

Meredith sat on his bed and pouted, sneered, glared ocean-blue eyes at a blank corner where he could just see a spider's web lurking in the shadows. “I hate school,” he grumbled.

“Why?”

Meredith snapped, words spilling out of him in a rant. “It's boring! I already know all of it and the teacher won't believe me, she just yells at me and hits me and tells me I'm cheating because I don't show all my work. Why should I have to show it all when I already know how to do it in my head? I hate school and the bullies and nobody wants to be my friend and it's all just so boring!”

Meredith's father nodded. “I see,” he said even though Meredith knew better. He knew the man didn't see, he was just as bad as the teachers and their boring work and their building-character nonsense and their not watching when the bullies made fun of him and his stupid girly name. Why did his parents have to give him a girl's name?

Meredith's father sat thinking. He did that a lot, Meredith knew. Maybe he was talking to the others in the sea, or maybe he was just thinking. Still, the others in the sea did talk in dreams, Meredith heard them sometimes when he was asleep in class and they whispered things to him. Wonderful, beautiful things about sharks and the sea and science and gates and Songs. He tried to play one of the Songs once on the piano but it didn't sound right and gave his mother a headache.

“I have an idea,” Meredith's father said. “Would you like to come with me tonight?”

Meredith's eyes went wide. “T-tonight?” He knew his father did Things on friday nights, headed out into the bad parts of town where there were empty warehouses and bikers and drugs and scary women on streetcorners his mother didn't want him to ask about. Tonight was friday and his father was almost never home this late, he was always gone by now into the river district with its docks and bars.

“Sure,” his father said. “You're almost nine years old, it's time you knew a bit about where we came from.”

Meredith snorted. “We're from the sea,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I'm not supposed to tell anyone because they'll think we're crazy or worse, they'll turn us over to the US military.”

“There's more to it than that,” his father said. “I think it's time you learned. Get your shoes on, we're leaving soon.”

*****

“Dagon and Astaroth are their names.”

_Ia R'lyeh_

“Belial and Beelzebub are their lieutenants.”

_Ia Dagon_

“The golden calf and the idols of Canaan are their abominations.”

_Ia Cthulhu_

Meredith sat in the front row of a line of chairs that extended back much father than they needed to. There were only ten or twelve people here, large people who smelled of fish and gasoline fumes. They chanted back at his father who stood at the front behind a podium and before an altar. At least, it looked a bit like one of those altars that were on TV when he stayed up late to watch the scary movies he wasn't supposed to.

Three idols sat on the altar, really just a card table with blue fabric over it. And candles, lots of candles for no reason. The idols were most interesting. The one in the middle looked like it had a squid for a head and dragon wings behind it. The one on the right was a crouched fish-headed man with large teeth that he half-remembered from his dreams. The one on the left was another crouched fish-headed thing but it had a ruff of spines down its neck and a tail.

Meredith liked the one on the left. It was oddly comforting to look at. His mind went quiet and he found his own small voice saying things he didn't even know, words that joined the chanting around him.

“Cthulhu fhtagn...”

He didn't know what these words meant, not really. But looking at that idol, he found he wanted to.

*****

“Who are Dagon and Hydra?”

The midnight ride home was not as quiet as Meredith's father had hoped it would be. Rather than exhausting the boy the night's festivities had wound him up, filled him with questions. “Father Dagon and Mother Hydra are the oldest and most powerful of us, Son,” he said. “Dagon is the warrior and protector, the one who defends the Nest from predators, from human interference, from whales...”

Meredith giggled.

“While Hydra is the great sorceress. She Sings us back to the sea when it's time. She weaves the Songs that make the Great Waves and she teaches the formulae that allow the wise to fell their enemies with a thought and a flick of the wrist. Dagon and Hydra are power and knowledge, a mated pair for one is incomplete without the other.”

“But... why then did you only praise Dagon?” Meredith asked. “And why does a religious group meant to bring people to Y'ha-nthlei only venerate one and not both? Wouldn't Mother Hydra be mad? I bet she's mad.”

“Wisdom is knowing when it's pointless to be mad, Meredith. And Mother Hydra is most wise.”

Meredith sat back as the car left the seedy part of town and headed back toward lit areas. He watched the warehouses give way to businesses then houses. How late was it? His mother would be mad at him for staying out this late. She never got mad at his father, not properly, only at him. He wondered what it would be like to have a different mother, one who was infinitely wise and powerful.

“Would you like to come back with me next week?”

Meredith sat up and gaped at his father and his words. He really would. It was interesting, it wasn't dull, it had pretty idols, and everyone there treated him like he wasn't weird or girly or too smart for his own good. But... “Mom will be mad at me,” Meredith said. “I'll be missing my bedtime every week.”

“I'll talk to her about it,” his father said. “But you'll have to keep doing your schoolwork, no matter how boring.”

“Awwww!” Meredith pouted.

 


	6. The Secret Raid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In _Escape from Innsmouth_ there are reports of an undocumented part of Project Covenant, a small raid on the Marsh Refinery to be carried out by Agents Lucas Mackey and John Edgar Hoover.
> 
> I misread Mackey as 'McKay' last night. This happened.

My name is Lucas McKay and I wish I'd never heard of Innsmouth.

I was there before the raid. Undercover work. Some scared kid escaped the town in the summer of 1927 and went straight to the police. A true patriot, that one. He told his story about the degenerate cult that held sway over the town, how he barely escaped with his life, he even told the constables about the monsters.

They laughed at him.

So did I.

I spent three weeks in and out of that town under the guise of a 'factory inspector'. The Marsh gold refinery was an obvious front, even I could tell their facility was a mess and a half. The cyanide tanks leaked, their grinders hadn't been used in years, they barely bought any ore, and their books were cooked worse than my grandmom's plum pudding. The Marsh family tried to pass off their books with some story about efficiency in the extraction process but I didn't buy it. No man with an eye would. But I smiled and nodded and tried not to think about what sort of disease would cause symptoms like that.

More than two thirds of the town was infected. They all looked the same with skin peeling off in scaly patches, hair falling out, wrinkles in their necks, webbed hands, some of them could barely talk. Not that I wanted to talk to them, one can only be scowled at so many times before one's cover gets stale.

But I got what I came for.

I wasn't even the one to act. I was simply an observer and getaway driver while the group of meddlers from Arkham investigated the disappearance of the local grocer, broke him from jail, and prevented his sacrifice. Sacrifice! Human sacrifice to some sort of heathen 'god' in the sea.

That was enough.

It wasn't nearly enough.

We didn't take the do-gooders seriously. We didn't take the kid seriously. We didn't even take the grocer seriously.

The US Government didn't believe in monsters.

We do now.

 **I** do now.

I worked for the US Treasury, the Secret Service branch. My specialty was in money laundering and Innsmouth stank of it. I thought that's all it was, some occult group hiding their ill-gotten funds behind the first amendment like the Golden Dawn used to. I was there to handle the Treasury's interests while the Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and Naval Intelligence handled their own affairs. My mission was to raid the Marsh refinery.

It made sense at the time. The refinery was where they kept all their paperwork and I'd done reconnaissance of the building and its environs. I knew the Marshes cooked their books but I needed more information. Where did the extra gold come from? Who was smuggling it in? What was the purpose? And did it have anything to do with the immense alcohol runs into Innsmouth we'd found?

We did not find smugglers or bootleggers or even Mafia. What we found...

Monsters do exist.

Monsters exist and they ran a gold refinery in the town of Innsmouth. Agent Hoover and I had a job to do. Sneak in, steal the books, burn the refinery. Any gold we found was to be taken in as evidence.

Boy did we find gold. Jewelry of intricate workmanship, of a strange pale alloy I'd never seen before. Jewelry worn by the monsters who fought back.

We got the books. We set the charges. We saw the monsters.

Fish-headed things they were. Gray-green and scaly with white bellies. Webbed hands and feet, they seemed almost to talk with their horrible croaking bleating snarling sounds. They had long black claws that they used to climb, to rend, to defend themselves. I got a bunch of scars on my left side from one of them that bit and slashed and screamed as I held it down and shot it.

We were supposed to take prisoners. It made sense during planning, there was never more than two or three people at the refinery at any given time. Two agents should have been enough.

We were wrong.

I barely escaped the blast with my life. Agent Hoover was lucky, the bastard, but he got weird afterward. I heard he started dressing like a lady after the raid, something about needing to be someone else for awhile.

I wasn't so lucky. I got a desk job and a pat on the back for my troubles. A nice cash bonus, a drinking problem, and the nightmares.

Over time the nightmares faded. Time and wounds and all. But now they're back. I don't know if I'm finally going off the deep end or if it's real and I'm not sure which is worse.

My son Samuel came home last week with a girl. They want to get married. I want to put a stop to it but my wife would kill me. She doesn't know why I have these dreams or why Rosalyn's eyes disturb me so.

I've seen those eyes before. I see them every night back in Innsmouth, in the faces of so many blankly staring faces that scowl and snarl and shriek. She's one of them, I know it.

I hope to God I'm wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Our grandmother was born Rosalyn Marsh... [she] was the eldest [of three], eight years old when the raids happened. There are no records here; if the others were anything like Grandmama then they got lost in orphanages too."
> 
> -Rodney McKay, _Sing the Stars Right_


	7. Dissonance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Related to s04e14 Harmony. Post _Questions Posed on Earth_ , during those missing three years.

_Explain to me why I have to wear this thing again._

Colonel Sheppard tried very hard to keep his attention on the path while rolling his eyes. It was a skill he'd developed over the years. Behind him trudged a figure in a large cloak, hood pulled down over its face. The verdant forest around them chirped and warbled with marshland creatures, birds and six legged toads and long serpentine amphibians with sing-song voices.

“Because, Rodney, we haven't been here for awhile,” Sheppard said for what felt like the tenth time. “We just got Atlantis back here and we need to make sure our trading contracts haven't been voided in our absence.”

_Yes, yes, that's why we're here. But why do I have to wear this?_

Sheppard stopped in the path, blocking the cloaked figure. It only somewhat barreled into him. It shook itself and murred. _I can't see a thing under this cloak._

“You have to wear the cloak because you look **very** different from the last time you were here,” Sheppard said. “You remember last time. The forest, the Genii, the annoying little girl. The _moneria Larris_.”

_Well, yeah. And that wasn't a monere, it was mini-drones. I feel insulted you would compare me to a non-sentient machine set to automatic._

“And that's what they're going to do,” Sheppard said, sighing. He pushed the cloak's hood up, letting Rodney see where they were. Green forest, the glint of freshwater marsh through the trees, the scent-taste-sense of peat bogs in the distance, the chorus of local wildlife. Large blue eyes took it all in. Silver-green-dark scales glinted in the early morning sunlight. A large mouth with too many teeth opened to lick the air, to taste the scents of the forest. “They're going to call you a monere and compare you to their machine. If they don't kick us out."

Rodney growled, hissing as he realized. As Sheppard turned and headed back along the path toward the main road and the castle. _You brought me as a bargaining tool! I'm nothing but some holy relic for you to wave under their noses!_ He pulled the hood back down to hide his snout and followed after Sheppard, growling. _I can't believe you're doing this to me. I can't believe Woolsey is letting you. Wait, no, I can believe that. I can't believe **Ronon** is letting you._

Sheppard turned again and bodily stopped Rodney from moving. “Look, Rodney, we all agreed,” he said. “We got taken off the main mission rotation last year when you took to the water. Before our team gets put back in we need to know how local superstitious people are going to react. We need to know how cultures with their own monere will deal with us now that we have you. That's why it's just you and me.”

_And the jumper full of backup hiding in the forest, right?_

“That's right. Now, c'mon, they know we're coming, they might have those little cakes you like...”

Rodney murred and laid his head on Sheppard's shoulder. Sheppard patted him and continued on toward the road, the castle, and hopefully food.

*****

“He's with me.”

Those seemed to be the magic words as Sheppard got Rodney through the town, the courtyard, the foyer, and up to the doors to the throne room. Only now they weren't working as the two guards who flanked the throne room refused to open the door.

“Queen Harmony was expecting you to accompany her Hero, not...”

Rodney stood on his own tail to keep it from lashing. He huffed under the cloak.

“Yes, well, that's something I need to talk to Queen Harmony about,” Sheppard said.

“Then you may enter. But your companion must stay here.”

_This was your plan?_

Sheppard glared at Rodney. Rodney hissed at him, ignoring how the guards leveled their pikes at him.

“Okay, okay, I'll go in alone,” Sheppard said. “But no one is attacking anyone, understood?”

“If your companion is dangerous...”

“He's slightly more dangerous than I am,” Sheppard said without irony.

The guards relaxed. They all knew the story of the Hero and the Coward who aided their Queen Harmony's ascension to the throne. They smirked as they opened the doors to the throne room.

“John Sheppard, it has been many lunar cycles.”

Sheppard walked up the carpet that blanketed the stone floor, up to the Queen's throne. He bowed, sloppy though it was. “You have grown since last I saw you, Your Highness,” he said.

She had. Queen Harmony had grown from a child to a young woman, sixteen years old. However he could still see the child she once was as she looked around him, seeking someone else. “You did not bring Dr. McKay,” she accused.

“Actually, I did,” Sheppard said. “About that...”

“Then where is he?” Harmony demanded.

“There was an... issue with the guards,” Sheppard admitted. “They were...”

Harmony didn't wait another minute, storming down the carpet to the antechamber doors. She threw them open. “Where is my...” She trailed off as she saw the cloaked figure before her. “What is this?”

The cloaked figure stood tall, taller than any man she'd ever seen outside of a traveling circus. Its cloak was long, long enough to trail on the floor and the ground outside, its hem black with mud and studded with twigs and leaves. The cloak itself was damp or perhaps the smell was due to the creature underneath. The hood was pulled down so far as to keep the figure's face completely hidden from view but the shape of the thing...

“Your world has the _moneria Larris_ ,” Sheppard said, ignoring her gasp and glare as he used the Beast's proper name. “Our world has monere of its own.”

Harmony's shoulders slumped as she looked up at the cloaked figure with something akin to awe. Or maybe fear.

Sheppard placed a hand on her shoulder and drew her away, back toward her throne.

“You brought one of your monere here?” Harmony asked. “But why? And where is Dr. McKay? Is he its honored fata?”

“Maybe we should wait for your Court to attend...”

“Absolutely not!” Harmony stomped her foot and turned on him, throwing his hand off of her. “You will tell me what's going on! Now!”

Sheppard took a deep breath. “Our monere aren't like yours,” he said. “They don't live in the forest and wait until they're needed. Instead they grow up looking human, just like you and me. But then they reach a certain age and then... they Change.”

Harmony looked confused and a little disgusted. “Your monere used to be human? Gods below, it must be hideous.”

“Harmony, that monere out there used to be Dr. McKay.”

Harmony backed away from him, eyes wide. “That's not true...”

“He still is Dr. McKay but he's very different,” Sheppard continued even as she retreated. “He's not a human being anymore; he never was, not really. He can't talk anymore, Harmony, but I can still hear him. I'm his 'honored fata'.”

At this Harmony shook her head and ran.

The doors from the antechamber opened and Rodney loped in with one guard held aloft in his tail and two pikes held in one long-fingered paw. His cloak was halfway to falling off and he'd given up standing upright. _Well, that went well._

“Shut up, McKay.”

The guard's eyes went wide and he stopped struggling.

“Well, she doesn't believe you're you,” Sheppard continued, ignoring the guard. “Which, admittedly, is better than I expected. I figured she'd have us in the dungeon by now.”

 _That's because we always end up in dungeons._ Rodney shook the cloak off as he hissed and bleated, finally tearing the thing away. He swiveled an eye back at the choked scream.

“Put him down, McKay.”

Rodney put the guard down. The man didn't run, instead he backed away but stopped as soon as he hit the wall.

_Well, now what?_

“Mission failure, I guess.”

Rodney snorted then murred, tail lashing. _And I was hoping so much for those little cakes, you know the honey ones? Oh and the wine. Wait, but I can't have good beer anymore, what if I couldn't drink the wine here either? That would be horrible!_

Sheppard nodded sagely, not even hiding his amusement. “Of course, McKay, that's obviously the worst part of it.”

_We'll just send Teyla next time. Maybe she can fix this._

“Actually...”

Rodney cut him off with a snarl. _No! Don't you dare say she's going to leave! I know our new planet's harsh and terrible and, and..._ Rodney shrieked, curling in on himself and tossing his head, tail flailing. Sheppard jumped over it as it swung out and almost knocked him off his feet. _She can't leave..._

“I know it's hard, buddy, but it's her choice. It's her future, her people's future, she has to look out for that first.”

Rodney hissed then murred, crouching next to Sheppard. He leaned, not even caring how much he felt like a dog.

Behind the throne a door closed.

*****

Harmony lay on her bed, the canopy's curtains pulled closed. She held a pillow close as she sniffled. “He's lying,” she murmured to no one in particular. “He's a big lying liar. A big fat lying liar and he's lying.”

The curtain opened and a weight settled on her bed. Harmony looked up to see her older sister Flora. “It's not true,” Harmony said, eyes red with silent tears.

Flora stroked her younger sister's hair. “I know it hurts,” she said.

“It's not true!” Harmony shouted. “It can't be! He was my Hero, I was going to, going to... It was the perfect way to...”

Flora held her sister as Harmony collapsed against her, crying. She held her there, waiting for the tears to run themselves out.

“He was devastated, you know,” Flora said as Harmony's quiet sobs slowed. “The monere. He bested the throne room guards and burst through the doors. When he heard you rejected him he screamed with such anguish.”

“Really?” Harmony asked, still sniffling. Her voice grew hard. “Did that liar tell you that? He claimed to be McKay's fata.”

Flora shook her head. “I saw this with my own eyes,” she said. “He lashed out at Sheppard, nearly knocked him over, and let out a shriek the likes of which I have never heard before. Sister, they were talking about you, about how you have to do what's best for your people and if that means rejecting him, well...”

Harmony looked up at her in shock. Maybe he really was... “Sister, I have made a terrible mistake.”

Flora smiled. “I believe they are still in town. I will have a messenger sent.”

*****

Rodney sulked under his cloak. No little cakes, no pale wine with the great kick, no roast loden bird, no braised not-a-peccary in mushroom sauce, and none of those little appetizers made out of frog eggs preserved in cheese. He huffed and murred and growled bitterly at passerby as he followed Sheppard down the road toward the gate.

_I can't believe it. After all we did for the little brat. They're weird and superstitious here, they even have monere, but noooo that's not enough. Maybe it's the Satedans who are weird and I should expect angry mobs wherever we go._

“I just hope we can keep some sort of trade going here,” Sheppard said. “I don't know about you but all the black seaweed just doesn't seem right.”

_It is a little stark. And there's no fish! An ocean world without fish, what am I supposed to eat when I'm in the water? Squid? They're all flashy and sour._

“Rodney, everything tastes sour on that planet.”

Rodney huffed and almost knocked over the small boy who ran up to them. He barked and hissed at the child. _Another one, get rid of it._

“Message for you, sir,” the child said. “Queen Harmony apologizes profusely and requests your presence at the castle. Both of you.” The kid bowed and ran off.

Rodney nodded then immediately turned around and headed back.

“Rodney!” Sheppard scolded. “This is a bad idea, let's just go!”

Rodney snarled. _Cake. Wine. Real fish. Little frog eggs in cheese! Food that doesn't taste like it'll kill me!_

Sheppard rolled his eyes and grabbed Rodney's tail, tried to pull him down the path. Rodney merely flicked him off. “Rodney, we're going home,” he grumbled.

Rodney turned on him, snapping and hissing. _You're the ones who said this was important! You're the ones who said we need these allies, that we need to keep these treaties, that we can't just start over! Well, Colonel, that means going back up there, dealing with whatever bigoted little freak-out that child is having, and keeping the damned treaty. I am perfectly willing to sacrifice my pride on the altar of tasty little frog eggs in cheese to keep this treaty._

Sheppard looked more disgusted than confused. “What is it with you and...”

Rodney snarled to cut him off. _That is not the point! My point is are you really going to let this all fail when all it would have taken is going back up there and seeing what the brat wants?_

Sheppard sighed then steeled his features. “Fine, we'll do this your way. Lead on.”

Rodney purred and bounded up the path, hopping on all fours. His cloak flapped behind him, not even concealing his monstrous form.

When he got up to the castle he realized he was alone. The guards on the door didn't count even as they stared at him. Rodney leaned over the stone overlook and barked out over the town. _Sheppard, get up here!_ He murred as a few people clutched at their heads, focused his thoughts on Sheppard. _Don't make me come get you. We're missing the food!_

He crouched on the stone overlook like a cloaked gargoyle, tail lashing behind him as he huffed and growled impatiently. He fixed Sheppard with a glare that might once have been a put-upon pout if he still had the lips for it as the man took his sweet time walking up the steps to the castle. When he got to the doors Rodney finally jumped down, stood tall, and laid his head on Sheppard's shoulder so he could properly feel the indignant growl. Sheppard glared and shoved Rodney off of him.

The castle doors opened and they were ushered inside.

“Welcome, my friends.”

 _Well, this is different._ Sheppard glared Rodney to silence. Harmony stood before them with her arms open and her sister at her side. Harmony's eyes were still a little red and her sister had a handkerchief stuffed in her bodice. They met alone, the throne room empty as it usually was when Lanteans came to visit.

Harmony still looked unsure as she eyed Rodney under his cloak. “I have been told of your... transformation... Dr. McKay, would you grant me the privilege of... seeing what you have become?”

Rodney glanced at Sheppard. Sheppard gestured and Rodney nodded. He let the cloak fall.

The Deep One stood there, spines rattling nervously as his dorsal fin raised and lowered with each breath. His gill plates were held closed even as his tail lashed and he stood up on his hind legs. The blank fishy head showed no expression as his clear blue eyes blinked with an odd three note beat. But there were still signs that marked him as Lantean. For one he still wore the thigh holster with its weapon and tools. For another there was the strange comfort Sheppard seemed to take in seeing the monster's form. For a third there was the creature's voice.

It was an animalistic series of calls and snarls and yowls that seemed so familiar to Harmony. McKay had sounded like that in the forest, in the banquet hall, at the hands of his team mates, there were sounds there that he had always made. He made them now, wet hissing and soft bleating sounds of a high annoying pitch. It made sense that Sheppard could translate those sounds back into the words they once were.

“It's really you,” she whispered, coming close. She stepped very near Rodney, ignoring how his tail lashed and he slid back on clawed and webbed feet. “You really are monere.”

Rodney nodded.

She reached out to draw her fingertips down the scales of his arms. She pulled back all too quickly and blinked back tears. Flora came forward, offering her handkerchief. Harmony took it and wiped her eyes. “I was going to,” Harmony whispered. “Nevermind... it's unimportant now that it can never be. I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” Sheppard said. “We regret it as well but we understand completely.”

Rodney bleated. _Wait, there isn't going to be food?_

“You will stay for a time,” Harmony said, drying her eyes and pulling herself up to her full height. “It would be untoward not to. We must arrange a feast in honor of our resumed agreements.”

Sheppard wondered what had just happened. He continued to wonder even as he gave the all clear to the waiting jumper, as the day wore into night, and as Harmony continued giving Rodney these strange forlorn gazes.

 


	8. Exile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Possibly part 1 of more. Depends on if I write more.
> 
> Colonel Caldwell has not set foot upon Earth since R'lyeh rose and sank. He's not Earth's only exile.

The _Daedalus_ dropped out of hyperspace near the inner edge of the asteroid belt. Protocol was to drop out near the belt and request a vector to avoid Mars and the Dawn probe, approaching Earth from behind the Sun. It was the only way to avoid the Hubble, the Swift, the Spitzer, or any the innumerable ground-based telescopes that might unluckily catch a glimpse. Subspace communications only, no one knew who might be listening in on the radio band.

“Lieutenant, open a channel,” Caldwell said. The comm channel opened. “Flight control, this is _Daedalus_ , requesting an approach vector for Earth orbit.”

“ _Daedalus,_ divert to Edgeworth Station.”

Caldwell's pause was the only indication that this was a strange order. “With all due respect the _Daedalus_ isn't due for an inspection for another three months. What's the problem?”

“You are ordered to divert to Edgeworth Station. Your orders will be sent to you en route. Flight control out.”

Lieutenant Stuart at communications raised an eyebrow as he eyed Caldwell. The colonel seemed just as confused as anyone else. Caldwell sighed and dropped his hands on his knees. “Colonel Bishop, plot us a vector for Edgeworth Station. Avoid Saturn and New Horizons if possible. Lieutenant Stuart, get me those orders as soon as they come in.”

“Yes sir.” Both men answered in unison before getting to work.

Bishop finished first. “Sir, I have a parabolic approach to Edgeworth Station,” he said. “We're too close to the Swift to open a hyperspace window but I can get us there in 37 hours on silent running.”

“Do it,” Caldwell said. He hoped the SGC had good reason to divert them. No, he shook that thought away. Two months ago R'lyeh rose from the sea and Great Cthulhu awoke. Even in orbit Caldwell had felt it, the incredible pressure on his mind that threatened himself and his ship. He'd locked himself in his cabin, leaving Lt. Colonel Bishop in charge with orders to do what they could. He'd dreamed then, or maybe he'd been awake and the screaming vistas were real. Either way...

“Colonel, I... I have our orders,” Stuart said. “They're from Delta Green.”

Caldwell's blood ran cold. He didn't have the same headache as before, R'lyeh couldn't be risen, but maybe they were still too far to feel the effects. “What is it?” he asked. “Has Earth been compromised?”

“No...” Stuart read the text again, not believing what he saw. Someone up top was screwing with them, that had to be it. “You've been listed as compromised, sir. Delta Green has sent orders for you to be taken into custody the moment you set foot on Earth. The SGC is ordering us to drop you off at Edgeworth Station until the situation can be resolved.”

“What?” Caldwell demanded. He leaned over the comm station and read the orders himself. “I wasn't even on Earth when R'lyeh...” He trailed off as he read. And read it again. “I see.”

“Sir?” Stuart asked.

“Colonel Bishop, as soon as we reach Edgeworth you're in command,” Caldwell said. “Remember whose orders you follow. The _Daedalus_ does not land and Delta Green has no authority outside of Earth's atmosphere.”

“Understood, sir,” Bishop said.

Caldwell took a deep angry breath. “I'll be in my cabin,” he said before leaving the bridge.

*****

Lieutenant Mark Stuart stood outside Caldwell's cabin, unsure if he should be here. All he knew was the words he'd read were damning. Words like 'compromised' and 'dangerous' and 'thrall' and 'non-human'. He couldn't reconcile those words with the efficient, fair, well-liked Colonel who despite the whispers behind his back of 'career suicide' seemed content with commanding one of the BC-304s.

Stuart raised his hand to knock but decided against it. He turned to leave when the door opened.

Caldwell stood in the doorway, a strange quiet anger seething behind his eyes. “What is it?” he asked.

“I...” Stuart felt heat rush to his face.

Caldwell sighed. “Come in,” he said.

Stuart nodded and stepped inside. The door slid closed behind him.

Caldwell's room was currently a mess. Duffel bags were laid out on the bed, half the room's contents stuffed in and around them. Drawers were pulled open, the desk was empty, Caldwell was in the middle of packing up everything he owned on this ship in preparation for, what?

“You're curious, aren't you?” Caldwell asked, going back to folding and organizing as he packed his things.

“Sir...”

Caldwell paused in his movements, fixed Stuart with a long stare, then returned to his task.

“Permission to speak freely.”

Caldwell nodded.

“Sir, is Delta Green for real?” Stuart asked. “Half the SGC was compromised when R'lyeh rose. Rumor has it Colonel Carter locked herself in a padded room and tore it apart with her bare hands. They can't honestly be deciding everyone affected is a danger to Earth.”

Caldwell smiled, a grim, wry smile. “It's not just that,” he admitted. “I've been held by them before. The SGC stepped in then but now... I'm not sure what they can accomplish this time.”

“'This time'?”

Caldwell gestured to a chair as he began to pace the small room. “You know about Dr. McKay,” he began. “He took to the water as a full-fledged Deep One about a year ago. The transformation stole his ability to speak, at least, his ability to sound human. I suppose he 'speaks' but the noises he makes, bleats and barks and wet hissing sounds, there's nothing human about it.

“When I returned to Atlantis the first run after his Change the city itself had changed. There were rampant headaches among the holdouts. It was affecting me as well, horribly painful migraines that grabbed at the mind and twisted it until something snapped. And then I could hear him. I don't know if the Deep One's method of communication involves pure or partial telepathy or if it's a shared delusion that translates those sounds into words, but I can hear him. Everyone stationed on Atlantis either learned to hear him or they were evacuated to Earth.

“When I came back from that run Delta Green declared me compromised, had me arrested in my home, and tried to keep me for interrogation and testing. They called me a 'thrall', said I'd made myself a liability by opening my mind to those monsters. The SGC sprung me pretty quickly then, less than 36 hours, but this time...”

“This time Delta Green just has to point at the Pacific Ocean to be taken seriously,” Stuart realized. “The SGC won't be able to get you out of this one.”

“Probably not. They'll be too busy protecting Dr. Jackson.”

“So what's their angle?” Stuart asked. “It can't just be because you can hear Dr. McKay.”

Caldwell shrugged. “Delta Green used to have problems with their agents going mad and trying to join the 'enemy'. Some of them succeeded. They believe anyone who can hear a Deep One has opened their mind to 'alien ideas inimical to human prosperity' and can no longer be trusted.”

Stuart sighed and slumped in his chair. “So... that's why we're headed to Edgeworth,” he said glumly. “We have to leave you there while the rest of us actually get to set foot on Earth.”

“Basically.” Caldwell sighed. Maybe if he hadn't insisted on searching the Pegasus Galaxy for signs of Atlantis, maybe then he wouldn't be considered a security risk. Maybe then Delta Green couldn't claim he'd been searching for his 'Deep One master'.

*****

Edgeworth Station was a minor incongruity in the SGC's list of assets. It predated the launch of the _Prometheus_ , in fact the Station had been built as a repair yard and potential shipyard for sister ships. The _Daedalus_ had been built there in the middle of the Kuiper Belt out of titanium mined from unnamed trans-Neptunian objects. The _Odyssey_ made her maiden voyages here, unrecorded test flights among the comets locked in cold storage. Landings on Eris, scientific missions to Makemake, scans for Tyche, the SGC had amassed reams of data that scientists itched to make public. It was enough to change Earth's understanding of the formation of life in their solar system, expanding life's possibilities far beyond the limits of the Stargate Network.

Yet for all that, Edgeworth Station was a purely human endeavor. There were no transporters, no ring systems, no shields, no artificial gravity. Instead the Station rotated, a series of great tumbling wheels in space connected by a single axle down the middle of them all. Microgravity labs did research in the axle that was then pawned off onto the ISS, delicate hyperdrive parts were grown there, even the bacterial digestors worked in the axle to convert all organic waste into water, fuel, and the heat that kept the Station livable.

Caldwell beamed into a room that curved up on two sides, the arc of the station visible even from the inside. There were no windows here, no way to watch his ship fly off without him. Only the last radio call announcing their departure.

Then they were gone and Caldwell was alone.

Almost.

“Fellow exile!”

Caldwell looked around for the voice but couldn't quite place it until he looked up toward the station's axle. There were access shafts to the zero-g labs. At the far end of one of the access shafts was a woman with wild hair wearing BDU pants, combat boots, and a tiny tank top. She crawled into the shaft and slid down the sides of the ladder. Her personal sense of gravity changed as she 'fell' toward the station's arc, accelerating until she landed heavily.

Caldwell didn't quite know what to say or do.

The woman stood up, brushed off invisible dust, and tried to pull her hair back. It didn't work so she just stuck out a hand. “Dr. Sherri Thomas, aeronautical engineering,” she said.

Caldwell's eyes went wide. He shook her hand heartily, unable to stop the grin. “Dr. Thomas, it's a pleasure,” he said.

Sherri was suddenly a bit less enthused. “Do I know you?” she asked.

“No but I know your work,” Caldwell said. “You've taken excellent care of my ship out here.”

Sherri's grin was back. “Makes sense,” she allowed. “Which one? _Odyssey_? _Apollo_? Wait... Not _Daedalus_?”

“That's the one,” Caldwell said with pride. “Colonel Steven Caldwell, commander of the _Daedalus._ ”

Sherri's expression grew suddenly indignant as she began poking him forcefully in the chest. “You, sir, have done horrible things to that poor engine,” she accused. “At your hand she has done things I would never have believed. I have dismantled an entire KBO to fuel her repairs. I had to design a whole new trinium nanotube matrix to put her back together last time.” She punctuated this with a last few prods.

Caldwell's pride would not be quenched. He took her words as a compliment, regardless of their meaning.

She growled in mock fury before the bluster disappeared. “Come on, then, might as well meet everyone else,” she said.

“'Everyone else'?” Caldwell asked.

“You don't think you and I are Earth's only exiles, do you?” Sherri asked. “And make no mistake, we are all exiles.” She went to a door and tried to open it. There was an angry buzz but nothing moved. She tried it again. Buzz and nothing. “Oh, right. There's no air in there. Fine, we go around. I hope you can handle your zero-g, Colonel, because we got a lot of it.”

Caldwell followed her up the access shaft, listening to her give the current specs of the station. There had been a nanotube spill in one of the labs that unfortunately led to a slow decompression as the tiny fibers punctured the hull. Luckily a slow decompression meant the scientists could escape with their lives. Edgeworth Station rotated to keep a constant 0.4g, just enough to keep the residents from deteriorating but not enough to disturb the experiments.

“This'll set us back months, months I tell you,” Sherri was complaining as they floated through the axle, pulling themselves along with their hands. “The Asgard used to strengthen their ship hulls with carbon nanotubes, four by six atom wide strips of diamond latticed inside the entire ship like a wire frame. We use trinium but our methods are chaotic, like pressing fiberglass. I came up with the net matrix currently in use in the _Daedalus_ repairs and the _George Hammond_ was just built with it but even that's not the same. If I could find a way to grow the diamond lattice inside the net matrix and if we could reduce the total number of plates to minimize weak spots...”

Caldwell tuned her out again as they came to a new access shaft. Sherri pulled herself into it, shimmying down until it felt like gravity mattered and then sliding down to the bottom. Caldwell pulled himself in as well, climbing down so as to avoid landing on or in anything unwise.

“Colonel Steven Caldwell, I present everyone,” Sherri said, throwing her arm out in a grand gesture. “Everyone, this is Colonel Steven Caldwell.”

There was a chorus of 'hey's.

Caldwell looked around the room. He'd seen worse.

There was a complete lack of uniform as everyone just seemed to wear what they had around. One of the scientists, and Caldwell was familiar enough with Atlantis to pick a scientist out of a crowd at 20 paces, wore sweat pants, bunny slippers, and was nursing a mug of coffee. The rest weren't much better.

“So why are you all out here?” Caldwell asked.

“We're exiles,” Sherri explained. “All of us. Someone somewhere had us all declared too dangerous to set foot on Earth but too valuable to allow outside of the solar system.”

“Was this all from R'lyeh?”

“Not all,” Sherri said. “You have people here from the _Prometheus_ leak, people wanted for various crimes, and of course there's Bob. No one knows why Bob's here, he just is.”

From a far table a tiny Chinese man gave a wave.

“I don't even think Bob's his real name,” Sherri whispered conspiratorially. “But he's never given us a real name and he answers to Bob so...”

“I... see...” Caldwell said.

“And there's the R'lyehian exiles,” Sherri continued. “True, most of the SGC got taken down by that one but not everyone had the good sense to lock themselves in a padded room like half of SG-1 did. Dr. Lecter over there--”

An annoyed man with a facial scar glared at her. “That is **not** my name!” he snapped.

“--he was found eating a marine while under Cthulhu's influence.” Sherri spoke as though she hadn't even heard him. “It was all swept under the rug and now he's our local expert on reverse engineering Goa'uld technology. I am here willingly, and by willingly I mean I chose this over prison.”

Caldwell glanced around the room with a newfound worry. Suddenly the mismatched group of scientists, researchers, and assorted civilians seemed less stable than before. Not sinister, not really, but definitely below-board.

And he was stuck here until and unless the _Daedalus_ came back for him.

Great.

 


	9. Possibilities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Consider this an AU of my AU. It's a scene that never happened but I had to get it out of my head.
> 
> Post-series, minor spoilers for the Legacy series.

The wormhole engaged.

“Unscheduled offworld activation. It's... Sheppard's IDC?”

Sheppard stood behind Chuck at the gateroom console. He was most definitely not on the other side of that wormhole.

“Atlantis, lower the shield,” pleaded the man on the other side through the gateroom radio. He certainly sounded like Sheppard. “We're taking fire, please lower the shield.”

Chuck looked up at Sheppard who thought fast and picked up the radio link. “Sheppard, this is Atlantis, recommend you disengage the wormhole and redial,” he said.

“Negative to that,” came the reply. “We're under heavy fire, we have hostiles inbound, McKay's injured. We're coming through, lower the shield!”

“Lower it,” Sheppard sighed. “We'll deal with it when they get here.”

The shield fell and bolts of pale energy shot through the event horizon to fizzle against the walls. “Cover!” Sheppard shouted before Teyla came through, Rodney McKay's arm slung over her shoulders. He was gripping an energy burn on his side. Ronon came next, backing through with his pistol raised. Sheppard came last and the wormhole disengaged.

Only then did the four of them seem to realize their mistake.

Sheppard stared down at the four familiar strangers in his gateroom. “I told you to redial,” he said.

*****

Colonel Sheppard adjusted the mask and goggles he'd been assigned. This was not their familiar icy world, this was someplace entirely different. It burned their eyes, their lungs, their throats. It stank of sulfur and what little sunlight there was shone dull and red. The ocean was black and the city itself shone with an almost ominous copper-gold. To be honest, it reminded him of Hell.

At least the cold was the same.

Ronon wore his goggles under protest, annoyed at the loss of peripheral vision. Teyla looked serene and strangely beautiful with her delicate wire mask and brass goggles. At least, they looked like brass if brass were reddish.

Rodney was still in the infirmary, Dr. Biro was patching up his energy burns. And that was weird, Dr. Biro in charge of medicine instead of Carson or Jennifer. It was almost as weird as all of the scientists who kept coming by the infirmary to gawk at Rodney.

“A parallel universe,” Colonel Sheppard mused. It had happened before, though not with the gate. At least, not in his experience. Alternate timelines, sure, but this was a whole new level of weird.

“It would not be the first time,” Teyla agreed. “There was the _Daedalus_ that jumped through universes.”

“And Rod,” Ronon said. “Think this is that universe?”

“He did say their Atlantis was a difficult place to live,” Teyla mused. “This is indeed difficult.” She adjusted her goggles.

“We haven't always been here.”

The three of them looked up to see this universe's John Sheppard in the waiting room door. Except, he didn't seem to be wearing his uniform. Instead he wore soft silks in black under a long grey weighted cloak. A circlet of this city's strange red-copper metal adorned his head and his eyes almost looked like they shone in the half-light of the dim sconces. It must be a trick of the imagination.

“We didn't plan on landing here,” this strange Sheppard continued. “The induction array went out during our trip home from Earth. This was the only habitable planet in the area.”

Ronon tore off his goggles, squinting past the tears of burning acid. He shook his head to dislodge the pain.

“I'm not sure this is 'habitable',” Colonel Sheppard said.

Their Sheppard smirked. It was such a familiar expression it sent chills down the team's spines. “We got used to it,” he said. “Most of us, anyway.”

“And the rest?” Teyla asked. “I have not seen my counterpart or Ronon's among your ranks.”

Their Sheppard leaned on the wall in a familiar slouch. “You went back to the Athosians,” he said. “You decided this was no place to raise your son Torren and you left on amicable terms. Our Teyla returns often enough, trading, social calls, participate in local governance. I expect she'll hear of you in a day or two and she'll come to see for herself.”

“And Ronon?”

“Our galaxy's Satedans have been rebuilding their homeworld for quite some time now. They asked Ronon to help remake Sateda's culture, government, military... Last I heard he was running for Parliament.”

Ronon nodded, looking pleased. “It's good Sateda's rising here as well as home,” he said.

The door to the infirmary opened and Rodney walked out, muttering about his goggles and mask. Colonel Sheppard noticed the oddly shocked look on his hellish counterpart's face. He looked to Teyla who nodded. She'd seen it too.

“Well, since you're all up we should head to the conference room,” their Sheppard said. “If there's a way to send you back, we'll find it.”

*****

AR-1 sat clustered on one side of the conference table, four of the local inhabitants on the other. Dr. Biro, Dr. Zelenka, Mr. Woolsey, and their Sheppard all had the same weird shine to their eyes and none of them wore masks or goggles. None of them wore the Expedition uniforms, instead draping themselves in soft silks of their department's colors, weighted cloaks over their shoulders, copper circlets on their heads, it felt more like a village council than an Earth expedition.

“So where's your McKay?” Rodney asked.

That was interesting, the local's reaction to Rodney speaking. Colonel Sheppard couldn't place it but he knew it was weird.

“He is already working on problem,” Zelenka said. “He has theory.”

“Great, let's hear it,” their Sheppard said.

“There was starquake on our neutron star when wormhole engaged,” Zelenka said. “The...” He paused and glanced at AR-1 before continuing. “The miners logged time, magnitude, and local effects. They are returning early due to radiation.”

“Mat'eos,” Woolsey swore.

Rodney perked up immediately. This Woolsey spoke Ancient? He and Teyla exchanged shocked glances before Rodney turned his considerable attention on their hosts. “You have a neutron star,” he said, a purr lurking in the back of his voice. “You're mining it or its environs.”

“It has planets,” Zelenka said dismissively. “Not important. What is important is we know the trigger of your arrival. Is first step to sending you back.”

“I assume you contacted the IOA,” Colonel Sheppard said. “What's their view?”

Their Sheppard looked uncomfortable. He glanced to the others who all nodded. He sighed. “We have no contact with Earth,” he admitted. “We didn't exactly leave on the best of terms.”

“What else is different about this universe, I wonder,” Rodney mused, returning his full attention on Woolsey.

Woolsey's eyebrow raised at the completely unsubtle challenge. He glanced at the others who nodded. Radek even added a smirk to his nod of assent. Woolsey turned back to Rodney and grinned. “There's one likely difference,” he allowed. “Was there an author in your world called 'Lovecraft'?”

“H. P. Lovecraft?” Rodney asked. “Of course.”

“Who?” Colonel Sheppard asked.

“The 'Call of Cthulhu' guy,” Rodney said dismissively. “Yes, we have a Lovecraft.”

Woolsey's grin grew ominous. “Ours didn't write fiction,” he said. “He transcribed events and disguised them as fiction.”

Rodney's eyes went wide and he visibly gulped. “Oh?”

“Yes. You see, our Dr. McKay had a very interesting past. It turns out his grandmother was orphaned in 1928. In Innsmouth.”

“Innsmouth,” Rodney said, face kept carefully neutral.

“As in 'The Shadow Over',” Woolsey clarified. “It led to some minor oddness, nothing of import, until events concerning a machine meant to force ascension.”

“I reprogrammed that machine,” Rodney said. “It reversed the effects and that was it.”

Woolsey chuckled darkly. “Not here. You see, the Innsmouth Taint is meant to take a lifetime. But because of that machine... A transformation that should have taken three decades was completed in just over a year.”

“You said your McKay is working on our problem,” Rodney said slowly, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

“He is,” Radek assured. “He stopped being human. He did not stop being McKay. He has taken entire base of central tower as lab and lair.”

“What's going on?” Colonel Sheppard demanded.

“I too would like to know,” Teyla said.

There was movement in the darkness outside the conference room. A flash of eyeshine shone from near the transporter.

Their Sheppard tilted his head as though listening to something no one else could hear. He smirked. “Deep Ones adapt to their environments,” he said. It sounded like a non sequitor until the door opened and something loomed.

Colonel Sheppard and Rodney both pulled away from the door as the shadows parted to show some sort of creature. It stood almost eight feet tall on its hind legs, an extra five feet of tail trailing behind it. Its skin shone in the wan light, iridescent and wet. It loped on webbed paws and clutched a tablet in its twisted foreclaws. But the worst wasn't all of that or its palpitating gills or even the multitude of spines down its back that rose and fell in non-patterns. The worst were the eyes.

Rodney saw those eyes every day in the mirror.

The creature opened a maw littered with too many teeth and shrieked. Then it turned on Rodney, loping close. It leaned down over him, licked the air in front of his nose, rustled its gill plates...

And Rodney fainted.

The creature murred, its tail lashing behind it.

“Well, we did just tell him,” their Sheppard drawled.

The creature huffed. It loped over to the head of the table and laid out its tablet. Then it began making noises, bleating and barking and growling.

Colonel Sheppard felt a headache behind his eyes. Ronon sat in rapt attention while Teyla shared a sympathetic look with the Colonel. Meanwhile the strange locals seemed to be taking this creature seriously, asking questions and making suggestions and somehow understanding the thing.

This thing was their Rodney.

Colonel Sheppard looked over at his Rodney. No wonder he'd fainted.

*****

It turned out the problem was the neutron star. This Atlantis had a rule about stargate usage from that direction because of the neutron star and its moods. When AR-1 dialed home their wormhole was caught in the starquake which dragged them across universes. Determining that was the easy part.

Now they had to get back.

There was one thing to say for this monstrous Rodney, it certainly had good ideas. At least, Zelenka insisted it did. Colonel Sheppard wasn't so sure, not even as he walked past the main labs to find his Rodney in loud discussion with their Rodney and Zelenka, none of them speaking the same language as the other. It didn't matter that they seemed to be getting stuff done, it was weird.

Colonel Sheppard found himself in a corner of the mess hall poking at the strange foods on offer. Black seaweeds, local squids, Pegasus favorites, given they had no contact with Earth it made sense but...

Ronon and Teyla joined him without a word. Ronon poked at his seaweed. “Tastes sour,” he said before even taking a bite.

“What manner of author is this 'Lovecraft' that his stories' truthfulness could cause such differences in our worlds?” Teyla mused aloud.

Sheppard shrugged. “Rodney made me read a couple of his stories,” he admitted. “Other than that I never cared for him. He wrote horror stories about the insignificance of man.”

“One man is often insignificant,” Teyla said. “It is not horror to realize this.”

“I don't know then,” Sheppard admitted. “Somehow their Rodney turned into a monster and that changed everything. He has something called a 'Song' and it's slowly changing everyone else here. They all have those shining eyes and they can breathe the acid. And they understand him.”

“He's got big claws,” Ronon said appreciatively.

“Counselor Biro told me he used to have scales,” Teyla said. “He was once sufficiently armored so as to ignore a Wraith stunner but this world's acid has stripped him of that protection.”

“'Counselor'?” Sheppard asked.

“Woolsey, their Sheppard, Zelenka, Biro, and McKay. 'Counselor' is their rank in their current political system. Each one has an equal voice and each voice is heard equally.”

“Good system,” Ronon said.

Sheppard looked over at the people around them. One or two still wore masks, though they appeared to be more decorative than protective. Most had eyes that shone in the half-light of the red dwarf star. This was not their Atlantis.

They needed to get home.

*****

The trip home was uneventful, involving the neutron star and some jury-rigging with a ZPM. They left with nary a goodbye, save for Rodney who seemed oddly reluctant to flee through the gate away from all this hellish weirdness. The wormhole left them on a verdant world, the same one they'd fled while under fire.

This time they didn't wait to be fired upon. Nor did they risk dialing Atlantis directly. They headed to the Alpha site first before going home.

Their own home.

Later, as Teyla and Torren built a pile of snow while calling it a 'Mynah Bird', as Ronon practiced in the gym while lost in thought, Sheppard followed a hunch to Rodney's quarters. He buzzed the chime and awaited an answer.

The door opened to Rodney looking haunted and somewhat guilty.

“What's up?” Sheppard asked, worming his way in.

Rodney spluttered before making a noise that sounded a little too much like something the creature McKay would have made. Sheppard felt something wrong prickle at the back of his mind. “Rodney?” he asked.

Rodney sighed and dropped onto his bed next to a box. It was a box he'd kept in his closet for so long he could sometimes forget it was there. “So did you actually read 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth'?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. “The ending was really creepy. The whole time the guy was one of those creatures and he didn't even know.”

Rodney opened the box. Inside was something wrapped in black silk. “He didn't even know.” He sighed. “If he'd known he wouldn't have been driven out of town. He wouldn't have gone to the military. Innsmouth wouldn't have been destroyed.”

A chill crawled up Sheppard's spine. “Rodney?” he asked again.

“The difference in our universes wasn't Lovecraft's work,” Rodney said, not looking at John. “It was the ascension machine. It sped his Change and did nothing to mine.” He unfolded the black silk to reveal something that glinted gold.

“What?” Sheppard demanded.

Silk fell away to reveal a gold tiara, a pale alloy rarely seen. The workmanship was exquisite, intricately detailed from the twisting seaweeds to the curling fish to the human-shaped fish-headed creatures that cavorted amidst the bubbles. But it was shaped all wrong, fitted to a head of inhuman outline.

“My grandmother was Rosalyn Marsh, orphaned in the Innsmouth raids of 1928,” Rodney said. His fingers gently ran along the details of the tiara. Then he put it on and finally looked at John, fully expecting the look of dawning horror on Sheppard's face as he slowly backed away.

Rodney closed his eyes and sighed as the door slid shut. Sheppard was gone.

 


	10. The First Oath

_Ia Dagon! Ia Hydra! I, Meredith Rodney McKay, do solemnly swear that I will neither interfere with, nor inform upon, the activities of the deep ones. Ia Dagon!_

Meredith took the first Oath of Dagon on his ninth birthday.

It was a gift, a birthday present from his father. He would be the youngest inducted into the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Meredith could handle it, of course he could, he was a Marsh like his father and grandmother. They took the enemy's name for survival, nothing more. Nothing was more important than survival for while they survived the Marsh family would never fall. Obed Marsh began great things when he gave the town of Innsmouth to the sea. That greatness must continue, even if it was such a small thing as this.

The Esoteric Order of Dagon was once based out of the enemy's stronghold, from within the churches of Innsmouth when the preachers had gone to sleep or were dragged away on some 'errand'. Then it grew too large, taking over the old Masonic Hall, the Masons being the last organized source of opposition after the riots.

Now they were within the stronghold of the enemy again, in the dregs of commerce, in the abandoned places, in the buildings left to rot by the same capitalism that left Innsmouth weak to outsiders.

The idols were no longer gold and stone, instead they were wax, wood, clay, handmade by Meredith's father from half-remembered descriptions and vivid dreams. Father Dagon with his large hands and larger claws, his great maw with sharp teeth all knocked out by the stress of travel. Great Cthulhu with his formless head vaguely bearing tentacles and the scratches on his back that were meant to be wings, or perhaps the wings had come unglued and were lost in transit. Mother Hydra with her sleek tail curled around her and half her spines snapped off in storage.

Meredith did not question why his father didn't commission more, perhaps from a real artist. Not after the sermon on Delta Green and what those bastards did.

*****

“He's an amazing clinical player but he has no sense of the music. He has no soul for it.”

Meredith sat in his room, fuming on the bed. Music is unimportant, his father said. Human music is a finite pointless thing, notes pounded out on instruments to make themselves feel better about their own mortality. Human music is boring, pointless, look what it does to your mother when you try to play real music on the piano, Meredith. I know what you're doing, you're trying to play the Songs you hear in the dreams. Stop it. It makes your Mother crazy, you know. You don't want to drive your mother any crazier than she already is, do you Meredith? No? Good, then we can forget this whole piano business and you can get on with preparing for your Change.

Meredith hated when his father would take his thoughts and twist them like that. It wasn't Meredith's fault that his mother was seeing things, jumping at shadows, begging his father not to...

Well... It was easier not to think of that one or of the noises from the bedroom that happened later.

His door opened and a small figure stood in the doorway. “Daddy's fends is here.”

Jeannie was barely two years old and already their father didn't like her. She didn't have the ocean in her eyes, he said. Meredith didn't know, her eyes were the same color as Dad's...

Meredith patted the bed next to him and Jeannie nodded. She closed the door behind her to block out the sounds, the smells, the reality outside and climbed up on the bed. She sat next to him.

“Daddy's fends are meen,” Jeannie said.

“They're not mean to me,” Meredith said.

“Yur meen too sometimes.”

Meredith held his tiny sister close as the noises outside grew nasty. Somehow that outside was what his father wanted him to grow up to be: loud, smelly, fishy, never accomplishing anything in life or making a mark on human society. Somehow he was supposed to be superior but would never be allowed to prove it. Survival was more important than fame and there were those who would take any sign of taint as an excuse to kill. Better to wallow in obscurity than better the human's lot and be killed for it. Or worse.

Their father never said what was worse than death, he only said 'or worse' and made scary faces and fingers.

Meredith knew he was smarter than the rest of them. He knew what he was capable of. He knew his dullest of thoughts would take a lifetime for those knuckle-dragging ape-bred humans to comprehend. He wanted to show it. He wanted to be taken seriously for once in his life and not just for his blood.

He had talents, dammit. He would use them.

Somehow he knew the voices from his dreams, the vast consciousnesses beneath the sea, he knew they would agree with him.

The humans would take him seriously, even if he had to die to do it.

  _I understand and accept that by breaking this Oath in any way, I am subject to trial and punishment by the members of the Order, and that such punishment shall be commensurate with the severity of the offense._


	11. Exile: Ship of Oddities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of the Exile arc.
> 
> Every exile is on Edgeworth for a reason. Except Bob. No one knows why Bob is there.

The shipyards of Edgeworth Station couldn't have been more different.

Where Edgeworth Station was a marvel of human engineering, the Edgeworth Shipyard spared no alien technology. Artificial gravity that could be changed with the switch of a crystal. Forcefields that allowed an engineer to keep half of the construction in atmosphere while the rest floated in vacuum. Central heating that didn't vary due to the health of a bacterial population. Proper toilets and showers. Stale recirculated oxygen.

The Shipyard followed the Station in a trailing orbit, far out of sight at nearly a quarter AU distant. Edgeworth had a pair of old model 302s to ferry crew back and forth but only a single pilot.

A pilot who was insane.

To be fair, Caldwell had to admit that everyone here was insane. The human mind could only grow so intelligent before it broke and lost stability. A vast most of the original Atlantis Expedition had suffered from the same condition, probably why they were chosen to go. Probably why they learned to hear McKay's Song so quickly during his transformation.

Perhaps those here at Edgeworth simply knew they'd already been judged and found guilty. There was no pretense at normality, no reason to hide anymore. Maybe that's why the pilot Alex was insistent in his identity, that he was a dragon cruelly born in the body of a man. Why Dr. Robin, the microbiologist responsible for the anaerobic digestors, always wore some flavor of animal ears once he was off duty. Why Dr. Thomas argued with herself over dinner, loudly discussing setbacks in her research in carbon nanotubes before insulting her own inner voices and demanding an apology.

From herself.

Dr. Lecter seemed to gaze at people with an oddly predatory look on his face. Grant, their 302 mechanic, tended to whisper about the Thousand Mothers and liked to grin at Caldwell with a creepy knowing smile.

Everyone here was just a little off in the head. Everyone except Bob. The man who answered to 'Bob' was completely normal and Caldwell couldn't figure out why the man was here.

*****

“So what are you in for?” Bob asked as he sat down across from Caldwell in the station's mess hall.

Caldwell looked up from his tray before letting his focus soften again. Edgeworth Station was so close to Earth and yet so far. They had the terrible instant coffee of the _Daedalus_ and of Atlantis but somehow Earth shipped them fresh vegetables? No meat or dairy products seemed to be included in these shipments so either someone crazier than the exiles was in charge of acquisitions or...

“Other than inattentiveness.”

Caldwell looked back up at Bob. The man hadn't left. “I assume R'lyeh,” Caldwell admitted.

“Interesting,” Bob said. “What did you do? Eat a man like Dr. Lecter?”

“It wasn't my fault he was so tasty,” came the shout from across the room. No one was surprised to hear Dr. Lecter protesting his transgressions in the least guilty manner possible, not even Caldwell at this point.

“I had visions,” Caldwell admitted. “I locked myself in my cabin until the screaming stopped.”

Bob's normality seemed all the stranger by how total it stayed. Suddenly he didn't seem quite so normal as the others grew interested in their conversation. “Surely there's more to it,” Bob said. “Most of the SGC suffered the same complaint.”

Caldwell looked away.

“You can tell us,” Bob said. “I can guarantee you, word will never leave this station.”

“The SGC rerouted me here,” Caldwell admitted. “I've been held by Delta Green before. Now because of R'lyeh there's orders to have me detained again and...”

“And you don't think the SGC can spring you this time?” Sherri asked.

Caldwell looked around, visibly annoyed at the audience they'd acquired. Half the station was crowded into the three tables around himself and Bob. Dr. Sherri Thomas was only one of nearly two dozen people leering in a way that made him uncomfortable.

“What were you in for the first time?” Alex asked.

“Was it worth it?” Grant asked.

Caldwell abruptly stood up, needing distance from the press of people.

Sherri held them back as Caldwell paced the arc of the mess hall. “It wasn't even my fault,” Caldwell snapped, almost talking to himself. “I was on Atlantis, McKay had Changed, I didn't know, I swear I didn't know what it meant! The others, they could hear him, the headache was gone for them, it hurt so much... All I wanted was for the pain to stop so I... I let go. I let go and I could **hear** him, in my head, hear his Song. They called me a thrall for it, took me from my own home, they had experiments set up. I can't go back there. I can't!”

“And now you're not safe on Earth,” Grant realized, grinning madly. “Not because R'lyeh rose but because it was the Thousand Mothers who Sang it to the surface. You're not safe from them. Or perhaps it's not your safety the SGC worries about...”

Caldwell stared openly as he realized what Grant was saying.

“I learned to hear her long ago,” Grant said wistfully. “She Sings the most beautiful Song.” That wistfulness faded into a hard glare, a demand. “I ask you again, Colonel, was it worth it?”

Caldwell backed away. He didn't flee the mess hall, not really. He simply left, his half-empty tray forgotten on the table.

*****

Sherri found him in the greenhouse arc.

The greenhouse arc was a wonder to behold, she had to admit. Racks upon racks of plants growing under purple-pink lights to maximize efficiency. All of their oxygen was produced here by these plants, as was much of their food. The fresh vegetables and fruit that seemed so strange to find out in space had as much a purpose as any tool or bulkhead.

“Once harvested the plant wastes go into the digestor,” Sherri said, explaining as though he'd asked. “The liquid from the digestor makes a great fertilizer. It's a system that feeds on itself.”

Caldwell hummed as he carefully touched a growing bell pepper. Lettuce, cabbage, peppers, tomatoes, plants he could no longer identify sat in racks along the walls and hung from the ceiling. There was a single path among the racks, a path that it seemed the plants were constantly trying to claim. “I never would have thought...” he whispered.

“Everyone finds it strange at first,” Sherri said. “Then you look at history and you find NASA was considering a system just like this for a Mars mission in the '70s. We just took the idea and refined it. It's damned useful when Earth forgets to send supplies.”

“Forgets?”

Sherri snorted. “'Forgets',” she repeated. “They never admit it's on purpose. They don't have to. Our last quarterly shipment was six kilos of trinium, 50 kilos of instant coffee, two acetylene tanks, a _Journal of Physical Chemistry_ , and half a flat of expired MREs. It doesn't take a genius to realize what they mean by it.”

Caldwell made a face, lips curling in a sneer. “I see,” he allowed. “Do they expect the work happens by magic? Are you supposed to Sing a ship repaired?”

Sherri laughed though there was no humor in it. “I see what Grant meant,” she said. “You do belong to a Deep One Nest.”

“I do not,” Caldwell snapped.

“Grant belongs to what he calls the Reef Nest,” she said, ignoring his protest. “Unfortunately, about half of all Nests call themselves the Reef Nest. The slopes of atolls seem to be a favored nesting ground for Deep One cities. I wonder what your Nest would be called. The Atlantis Nest? The Lost Nest?”

“The Heretic Nest,” Caldwell whispered. “The others called it that. While Atlantis was on Earth.”

“Interesting,” Sherri purred. “Well, so long as you and Grant don't get into turf wars. Or would it be surf wars?”

Caldwell glared at her. She ignored it.

“You belong to a Deep One Nest so I wager zero-g is familiar to you,” Sherri continued. “That's good. While you're here you'll have to pitch in a bit. Alex is taking a group out ice mining in the next few days. It's not long, a 27 hour trip, but you'd do well to report for it.”

Caldwell took a breath to argue but it made sense. He had no idea how long he'd be trapped here or if the _Daedalus_ was even going to be allowed to return for him. Moping in a cabin was not acceptable behaviour for an Air Force Colonel and he wasn't a scientist. At least this way he'd have something to do.

*****

Ice mining.

Ice mining meant being crammed into the belly of a 302 with Bob for eleven hours while Alex regaled them all with disjointed stories of 'dragon philosophy'. Caldwell tuned it out, not caring. He'd heard similar philosophies all over the Milky Way and Pegasus among tribal cultures and the Wraith.

“And what do you think, Colonel?”

“What?” Caldwell asked.

“I asked what you thought,” Alex huffed.

“Oh, um...” Caldwell thought of something that must be similar to Alex's rambling, something he'd heard Todd say once. “An intruder to your hunting grounds is to be warned once?”

“Not even that,” Alex said. “After all, let him trespass once and he'll do it again.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Caldwell drawled. “Once might be a mistake. After all, borders change with each hunt. Am I expected to keep track of everyone's hunting grounds? Shouldn't I be expected to show the same courtesy another would show to me?”

“A dragon doesn't show courtesy,” Alex huffed.

“In that case a dragon cannot be expected to live long,” Caldwell said. “If I trespass once it might be an honest mistake. If I do it a second time it's deliberate and must be dealt with. Crush the invading hive, kill the queen, send her blades away bereft.”

Alex blinked. “'Queen'?” he asked. “What?”

“Are you quoting Wraith?” Bob asked, eerily calm.

“Yes,” Caldwell admitted. At least he looked sufficiently cowed but his eyes betrayed an amusement that grew as Alex was scared into silence for the rest of the flight.

Any trace of it was wiped from his mind as the rear hatch of the 302 opened.

The darkness of open space was oppressive. Even through his spacesuit he could feel the cold of emptiness, mere degrees above absolute. Blackness stretched in every direction, a blackness broken by a million stars. One star shone just barely brighter than the others, harsh and white and oh so far. Caldwell wasn't even sure if that star was the Sun, not this far out.

The Kuiper Belt Object was unnamed, not even a catalog number. The lonely planetoid drifted in the blackness of space, caught in an orbit with a thousand unnamed bretheren, all of them too dim for the Hubble to see.

That was why they were here, Bob had said. The dim ones wouldn't be missed, they would never have names. No one would know.

That struck Caldwell as sad. Unnamed, forgotten, dismantled, never to be seen by eyes on Earth. Only the exiles would ever see it and they came to destroy, to dismantle, to disassemble it into component parts. Into ice, into gases, into titanium and gold and carbon and an entire periodic table of useful elements. Parts for ships, station repairs, even their food and water came from these nameless dark objects, forgotten in the void.

Maybe it wasn't so sad. The red-black film coating the surface of the object would find a new life in nanotube matrices. The pure white ices would melt, be separated into component elements and used. The water ice would be filtered through the plants and the bacterial digestors before he himself would drink it, consuming it. The dust and rock trapped in the ice would be smelted, might even form an armor plate on the _Daedalus_ before long.

That... made him feel better about dismantling this unnamed object, this lumpy non-sphere tumbling through space in an orbit only it could feel.

Caldwell strung out the belay line that kept him from floating away. This object was too small for gravity to have much of a hold on him or the 302 but still too large to drag back to the station intact. It needed to be dismantled first.

It had to be done carefully to keep any pieces from flying off at random and becoming a danger to future miners. A simple heat-cleave would crack this object, splitting it in two, four, more. Each piece would continue its orbit, following the pull only it could feel, only they could feel. If all went well they would bring back a single piece in tow leaving the rest for another day, another trip. Another chance to become something else.

*****

“Bob isn't normal at all, is he?” Caldwell asked once day.

He sat in the mess hall across from Sherri. He'd been here how long? Weeks? It didn't feel like weeks, or maybe it felt like it was longer. He'd been ice mining a couple of times, had learned he still knew which end of a plant went up, and was beginning to really miss MREs.

Sherri laughed. “Of course he's not normal,” she said. “He's a clinical sociopath, he doesn't believe in emotions so he just doesn't bother pretending. Still don't know why he's here though.”

“Ah,” Caldwell said. “I wondered why he was so... sane.”

“If he's sane then you run with a weird crowd,” Sherri said.

Caldwell grinned. Atlantis, Dr. Jackson and Colonel Carter, the Archivist, most of the SGC, yes they were all weirder than a normal sociopath. “Indeed I do,” he said proudly.

“Ship on approach. 2 AU and closing.”

The call went out over the PA in the mess. Caldwell looked hopeful. There hadn't been a ship announced since he'd been left here. Could it be?

“Don't get your hopes up, we're expecting a supply ship this week,” Sherri warned him.

Caldwell deflated but not by much. He knew the supply situation here. “You sure it's them?” he asked.

Sherri shrugged. “We should check it out just in case,” she said. “We have an hour until they get here.”

Caldwell nodded and followed her up the shafts toward the zero-g axle. There was a control center here, though few deigned to man it. The air was oppressive and hot so close to the digestors, the computers were old and finicky in zero-g, and nothing ever went on so why bother?

A tiny woman named Madeline was stationed here today. Caldwell didn't know much about her, he didn't know why she was here. And then it wasn't important.

“It's the _Daedalus_ ,” Madeline said. “They say they have our quarterly supplies and are looking to make a trade. Our stuff for their commanding officer.”

“Fair trade,” Caldwell said.

“They better have food,” Sherri warned. “If I have to look at one more salad I'm taking a page from Dr. Lecter's book.”

Caldwell inched away from her though Madeline only smiled. “I forwarded them the requisition list we sent to the SGC,” she assured. “The _Daedalus_ said they were checking it out. I'm directing them to the shipyards for offloading.”

“Good, good,” Sherri said. “Well, Colonel, it's been fun but we need to get you to your ship.”

“They're not just going to beam me out?” Caldwell wondered.

“Of course not,” Sherri said. “There are rules, you know. We make the exchange at the shipyards. C'mon, let's get Alex ready or at least awake.”

*****

The _Daedalus_ set down carefully in the drydock at the Edgeworth Shipyard. Crates were offloaded from the cargohold, supplies meant for Edgeworth and a few extra flats of food and materials that the _Daedalus_ could spare and the SGC had forgotten to send.

Lieutenant Colonel Bishop scowled as he surveyed the empty shipyard. Unfortunately there was no way to dock with the station itself, its airlock only capable of docking with the altered 302s they kept for their own purposes. Still, he'd been promised there would be people here to greet them, oversee the offloading of cargo, and there was the matter of their missing commander.

Despite the SGC's efforts it sounded like Colonel Caldwell would never be allowed back on Earth, not if he valued his freedom. The moment he set foot on Earth's surface, the NID and Delta Green would be there to pick him up and hold him for testing and 'treatment'. While the SGC understood Delta Green's caution given R'yleh's status, they could not condone such actions and Edgeworth Station was decided on as an acceptable compromise.

Now all Bishop had to do was convince Colonel Caldwell of this fact.

Bishop did not envy the Colonel. He knew he'd be pissed at being exiled from his own homeworld. After all Caldwell had done to keep Earth and her interests safe.

A door opened and voices tumbled out. Bishop recognized one of them but Caldwell was... laughing? What?

Bishop watched with something akin to horror as a woman wearing nothing but socks, BDU pants, and an undershirt squealed in glee and ran up to the _Daedalus_ with her arms held wide before laying on the ship's hull in a full-body hug.

Then there was the strange man who nuzzled, nuzzled! their commanding officer like some sort of animal. Worse, it looked like Caldwell was nuzzling back like it was some alien ritual. But everyone here on Edgeworth was originally from Earth, right?

Finally the pilot grabbed Caldwell's hand and the exchange there, well...

“Tame the storm with your wings and take its thunder for your voice,” said the pilot.

“May your hunt bring you the Queen's favor,” Caldwell replied.

Bishop's stomach dropped in his belly. That was something he'd heard a Wraith say once.

Then Caldwell turned toward him. “How was Earth, Colonel?” he asked.

“It was... Sir...” Bishop didn't know how to proceed.

“Hold that thought,” Caldwell said. “Dr. Thomas, stop molesting my ship!”

The strange lady visibly groped the _Daedalus_ before stepping away and coming toward them. She stormed right up into Caldwell's personal space. “You take care of my baby,” she snarled, poking him in the chest. “I especially want to know how panels C-13 and D-228 behave under battlefield conditions. You never say in your reports.”

“I'll let you know,” Caldwell said. “I promise. I'll get her nice and stressed but only on those two panels, then you can see how your design works.”

The lady grinned and hugged him before bounding off.

“Who or what...” Bishop asked.

“Dr. Sherri Thomas,” Caldwell said as she began to help the others with the cargo. “She oversees most of the repairs of the 304 fleet. We're testing some new hull design for her.”

“It's the first I've heard of it,” Bishop said.

“We didn't 'need to know',” Caldwell said. “Pissed her off to no end. Apparently we've been getting silent upgrades for years, ever since Hermiod left and couldn't veto her experimentation. Unfortunately, since we haven't known about them, we haven't been able to give reports to their efficacy.”

Bishop nodded. “So... I take it you didn't miss Earth?”

“It's interesting here,” Caldwell admitted. “Why?”

“Delta Green and the SGC have reached a compromise,” Bishop said carefully. “You can never set foot on Earth again. Edgeworth Station is the closest you will ever come. On the other hand, your command of the _Daedalus_ is safe and assured for as long as you want it.”

Caldwell looked over at the ship he'd commanded for five years now, then at the people who accepted him as a fellow exile. He supposed it could be worse. But still, never to see Earth again...

He'd barely seen Earth in those five years. But it had always been there, always waiting for him in the back of his mind. And now he didn't even have that. “I see.”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

Was it worth it? He didn't know. “I am too. Let's go. What are our orders?”

 


	12. The Second Oath

_Ia Dagon! Ia Hydra! I, Meredith Rodney McKay, do solemnly swear that, if requested to do so, I will render aid to the deep ones to the best of my ability, and in whatever form or manner is required of me. Ia Dagon!_

Meredith's father was against his son taking the second oath so early. The boy was eleven and already he was pledging himself to a lifetime of service to the Esoteric Order. It did spark a note of pride in him, that his son was serious about their bloodline, about keeping up the family traditions. But with the girl child Jean born regrettably human and his wife's mental state deteriorating quickly...

Meredith was moving far too quickly for his father's peace of mind.

But then, he mused, that might be his own fault.

He'd vetoed Meredith's pleas to be home-schooled so he wouldn't have to be so bored. He'd ignored the boy's teachers and their insistence that he be tested like there was something wrong with him. He'd instead tried to placate the child as his own mother had done to him. He'd brought the child into the family secret, made him realize what greatness lay beneath their skin, and most importantly he told the stories of the raid and of what those people did to their family. Stories of Delta Green, stories of their testing methods, of the concentration camps, of the family who were taken never to return. Death was a mercy compared to the rumors heard through the years.

Be grateful for what you have, take pride in what you are, you will do great things once your Change has stripped you of this human shell. Be patient. Be good. Be a quiet little child and don't draw attention lest you destroy us all.

But Meredith was not a quiet child. Perhaps there should have been more beatings. Perhaps he had too much of his human mother in him. Or perhaps he'd inherited the infamous Marsh intelligence.

Regardless, Meredith's father was not comforted by his son's actions.

*****

Taking the second oath opened a whole new world of possibilities for Meredith.

He was eleven years old and his dad's friends all looked at him with a new-found respect and more than a little fear. He liked that fear, he was a dangerous hybrid capable of terrible horrifying things, he **should** inspire fear. Delta Green should fear him and his kind, not the other way around.

Delta Green would wait, however. After all, he was eleven and the Change wouldn't even begin until after he'd grown up. He had time.

Meanwhile he was spending his evenings with a member of the Order, a fishy-smelling man named Roger with a white belly and bald head, flat nose, a gold chain always around his neck. He was a horrible man, talking loudly about nights spent with prostitutes using perforated condoms in an attempt to spread the taint to the city's underbelly. Meredith tried to remind him once that he was eleven and didn't need to hear this but the man only made him smoke a cigar, laughing as Meredith retched and gagged on the smoke.

But Roger owned a motorcycle garage, welding tools, a pickup truck. He didn't ask questions. He didn't look at the books Meredith read, he didn't seem to recognize the machine Meredith built. He did, however, help Meredith find junk to use in the construction. Copper piping, scrap steel, old brass fittings, used batteries, they found all the best junk and he taught Meredith how to use the acetylene torch.

Meredith was eleven. But he knew how to find things no one else knew of. He knew how to take junk and turn it into something beautiful. He knew how to mine a public library for all the secret things the librarians had forgotten about.

And now he was an eleven year old with a bomb.

Technically it was a non-working model based on the Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki. He'd left the casing off in his design to hide the model's identity, it also allowed an observer to see all the moving parts and the little touches he'd put in there including the uncased cross-section of the implosion sphere. The metals were mismatched pieces, copper and brass and aluminum and steel and half-rusted railroad spikes. Spray-painted plywood was visible in the cross-section, showed where the different types of explosives would have been used, marked where the compression wave would travel through the sphere to the plutonium core. He had a whole report on the explosives used, including how to make them with household materials.

Still, it was impressive and he'd made it himself. He'd learned how to weld, how to twist and bend the metal pieces, how to tear the carbon rods out of old batteries, how to use the acetylene torch to heat and melt and change and fuse and transform and he did it without burning himself much.

There was only one problem.

He lost to the kid who grew bean plants in paper towels. Something about 'regulation displays' and 'age-appropriate' and 'parental help'. Meredith insisted he didn't have parental help, told the principal all about how Roger let him use the garage and the tools and helped him salvage materials but he wasn't involved in anything important like research or writing the report or building the model or even taking apart the batteries, he'd done all of that on his own. His dad didn't even know about the project and his mom didn't matter so how dare they accuse him.

Meredith fumed in the hallway outside the principal's office, not noticing as the principal spoke to Roger, as Roger showed him all the research materials from the library. As the number of people around his losing entry grew, as they whispered and wondered and spoke with voices full of fear.

He noticed when the man came close. A man in a pristine black suit, black tie, and black glasses. Meredith looked up at that man and his completely blank face and...

He regretted it all.

“Come with me, Son,” the man said.

Meredith gulped. He shook his head.

“You will come with me, kid,” the man said again, voice harder.

“I want my father,” Meredith said. “He doesn't know I'm here, I need to see him or he'll worry.”

The man in black sneered, baring yellow-gray teeth.

“Meredith!”

“Dad!” Meredith jumped off the chair and ran to his father's arms.

Meredith's father held his son, held the shaking boy as he looked at the crowd near the model bomb, at Roger's betrayed stare, at his son, at the man in black's horrified realization.

“Meredith... what have you done?”

_I understand and accept that by breaking this Oath in any way, I am subject to trial and punishment by the members of the Order, and that such punishment shall be commensurate with the severity of the offense._

 


	13. Hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during s04e20 The Last Man. Also set between chapters 1 and 2 of Open Secrets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rodney McKay asked if he still had hair 25 years in the future. Deep Ones don't have hair.

'Did I still have hair'.

Hair.

Hair?!

I just spent the past twelve hours going over the next 25 years of future events with Carter, proving to Keller that I'm me, and trying not to freak out over the quantum mechanical implications that tell me you just destroyed an entire universe and that's what you ask me? In the gateroom, no less! We've got a team of marines right behind us, Lorne's right there, you're not looking any more human than you did 12 days ago, 700-odd years ago, or 48,000 years from now and you're asking me if your future self had hair?!

Here?

Dammit, Rodney, what do you want me to say? In front of people?

Do you **want** to hear how you locked yourself in an attic for 25 years, completely neglecting your Change, possibly even stalling it so hard it would never finish? You want me to tell you how your future you uploaded himself into a computer and then had planned to throw himself into the ocean just to see if the Change could still happen? Knowing full well even if it did he'd die alone and insane?

You didn't have to do that. You could have taken to the water on Earth, just forgotten everything. Forgotten Teyla, Ronon, Atlantis. Forgotten me. I wouldn't have cared because I wouldn't have known.

Instead you threw it all away.

Your hologram, your human-looking hologram, told me everything. You gave it all up after Jennifer got sick, told you to take to the water, then died. Gave up the SGC, the money, the prestige, the water, everything. You moved as far from an ocean as you could and pretended to be human for 25 years, pretended so well that it might have come true. Ronon died for what he believed, Carter too, and Atlantis just isolated itself. And the galaxy fell.

But you didn't have to do it.

God damn it Rodney, why?

Not just why did you ask me that, why did you do it? You destroyed an entire universe, budded it off of ours and let it burn away as you forced this one into existence and don't you dare tell me that's not a big deal, I can fucking **see** the math in my head.

You... gave it all up.

What do you want me to say?

I can't say it.

I can't tell you.

“Did I still have hair?” you asked.

I can't look at you. I can't risk you'll see the lie.

“No,” I say.

Interpret that as you will, Rodney. And don't ask me again.


	14. Ink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after s01e13 Hot Zone
> 
> Rodney seems to get put into a lot of situations where he needs a _deus ex machina_ to survive. Why shouldn't I substitute flimsy plot devices with my own?

Ink.

That's what the shadows looked like, ink spurts. Ink spat out into water by some sort of squid and you can still see the squid in it. Except it doesn't swim away, it comes right at you with all that ink flowing around its tentacles. Like it's an invisible squid and the ink is the only reason you can see it at all.

Look, I know, Carson. I'm fine. The EMP worked, you don't have to tell me that. Hello? Not dead here.

Yes, yes, yes, I know we decided it must have been the gene that protected me. But I've been thinking. What if it wasn't the gene?

Think about it. If the Ancients were supposed to be immune to this nanovirus then why cause hallucinations in gene carriers? Why scare themselves with the same hallucinations their victims had?

Yes, yes, I am also aware we don't know for sure the Ancients created the nanovirus. My point still stands though. If gene carriers are immune why did I get the hallucinations in the first place? And if gene carriers aren't immune like we thought then why aren't I dead?

See? That's exactly what I was thinking.

I wasn't immune. I just didn't die. There's something different enough that the aneurysm didn't rupture. In fact I bet if we did a brain scan you won't even see it anymore. Come on, let's do this.

What do you mean 'no'?

Fine. You're right, we don't have the power. But this isn't a frivolous use of the scanner.

Hmph.

Yes I have a point. My point is there's something different about me that allowed me to not die. I don't know if it was immune system action against the nanovirus or the superior elastic qualities of my collagen fibers but there's a biological reason why I was infected and then didn't die.

Exactly.

I didn't die because that nanovirus was programmed to kill humans.

I'm just human enough that I was infected, hence the hallucinations, but the infection couldn't finish the job. The aneurysm didn't get big enough or my arterial walls just didn't weaken right or the nanovirus attacks the brain tissue itself before even causing the aneurysm. Maybe the aneurysm wasn't what caused the hallucinations at all, maybe it was a side effect of the nanovirus's actions in that area of the visual cortex. Maybe it managed to attack my brain but couldn't affect my arteries at all.

Are you sure we can't do a brain scan? I'm feeling a little light headed.

No, it's just that if the nanovirus affected the brain itself I want to make sure it didn't leave any lasting effects. The last thing I need is brain damage.

Put that thing away.

Ow.

Carson, stop it. Stop shining that light in my eyes.

Ugh.

Yes I'm sure the hallucinations have stopped. I haven't seen any invisible squid covered in ink. I don't even think I had the same hallucinations the others had. I mean, they said things like 'get them off me' and 'they're everywhere' and I only ever saw one squid. Everyone else mentioned faces, ghostly skulls, clawed hands, I admit the part where they reach out for you was the same but I never saw faces.

Yeah well Heightmeyer can bite me. I'm not telling her this.

I'm talking to you because you're the only one who knows about me!

Yes, I think it's connected! Look, you have a nanovirus programmed to kill humans. The only person who survived the full incubation period is a Deep One hybrid. I also have the ATA gene but as I said before, if the ATA gene provided protection I shouldn't have seen anything. There shouldn't have been hallucinations.

Stop trying to make me feel better, it's not helping.

Yeah, well, this isn't the first time being a hybrid saved me. Or the city. I...

Tell me to take a swim again and you'll have no hot water for a week. I swear, Carson...

I need to go lay down.


	15. The Third Oath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: suicide (contemplated)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So why did Rodney's father commit suicide?

Stupid boy.

Stupid, mindless, senseless, genius boy.

It's all my fault.

He was supposed to grow up, keep his head down, breed the next generation of hybrids. Perhaps he would take the Third Oath and purify our line, breed with our Deep One kin to remove some of this human detritus clinging to us. Then mistakes like his sister would never happen again.

He was supposed to fall in line. I did and our family has survived another generation.

But he puts that all in danger.

Meredith just had to prove himself by building a bomb, a hell-damned nuclear bomb! For a science project! He'd have been better off if he built it for shits and giggles, at least that wouldn't have brought Delta Green to our doorstep.

They're here. I can tell. The unmarked black cars, two men in suits always watching. They watch the house, waiting for one of us to slip up. Waiting for me to reveal where the Order is, which of my children has the Gift. Waiting for me to take to the water so they can use me and my family for their own nefarious purposes.

Why don't they just kill us all? It would be easier than this constant surveillance.

I hate what Meredith has done. I hate what he's become. A victim. He's twelve years old in a high school, of course he's being bullied. But I can't homeschool him, I don't have the knowledge. Besides, what happens to us if I do? What will Delta Green do once there's no one to miss him?

The CIA is very interested in him. So is some group called the NID. CSIS wants to keep him, they're calling it a 'summer internship' but I know better. I know if they take him they'll never let him go.

None of them would ever let him go.

I blame myself. I blame him. I blame this whole human-run world.

He's like Grandmother Esther. I remember the stories my mother used to tell, of Esther's experiments and the books she wrote, the knowledge she gleaned. If only she'd been born human or male Esther Marsh's works would sit on the bookshelf of every doctor and biologist right next to Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel. But no. Her work goes unrecognized as modern science still struggles to even comprehend her ideas. Meredith will do something equally foolish and grand, mark my words.

But I can't protect him anymore.

If he survives he'll go on to do great things. If. That's a big if right now.

Delta Green constantly watches us but I don't think they know about him. He's always averted his eyes from the blank sunglasses of those agents in black. Even so I doubt they would see the ocean in his eyes. If I can make them think the danger is passed...

Oh Great Dagon what am I thinking?

Cthulhu save me there has to be a way...

There...

There is.

If they think the hybrid is dead.

If I give them Meredith they'll still watch me, still follow me, and if I breed again they'll kill the child. Even the human girl Jean.

But if I die...

Maybe they'll think the Marsh line is ended. Maybe they'll leave him alone.

I'm sorry, my son. Forgive me, my wife. Forget me, my failed daughter.

Father Dagon demands sacrifice.

Cthulhu fhtagn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In _Escape From Innsmouth_ the section on Esther's Lab mentions her treatises on evolution where she postulates a common aquatic ancestor of all land animals. Fossil evidence of that ancestor, Tiktaalik, was discovered in 2004, 80-odd years after she would have proposed it.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Song of Sea and Ice](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9216455) by [NebulousMistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress)




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